


Growing Up Lovegood-Potter (GULP)

by dark_pookha



Series: Lovegood-Potter Lunaverse [3]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Angst, Auror Harry Potter, Bullying, Child Murder, Coming of Age, Community: HPFT, F/F, F/M, LGBTQ Character, Quidditch, Serial Killers, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-17
Updated: 2020-06-27
Packaged: 2020-06-29 21:28:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 23
Words: 61,883
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19838848
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dark_pookha/pseuds/dark_pookha
Summary: image by starship2016@ShadowplayHarry's had a hard time since Luna left him for Rolf, but he seems to be getting better. Lily Lovegood-Potter and her twin Pandora Lovegood-Potter start at Hogwarts and discover Quidditch. The Death-Eaters' Children Killer lurks silently in the backrgound.All three learn about themselves.(Complete as of 27 June 2020)





	1. Harry-Before Year 1

Harry-Before Year 1

Steam billowed around the wheels of the Hogwarts Express. Lily and Pandora came back from having stowed their luggage and their pet Kneazle, Kaiya, on board. Both had put on their school robes at home, they were so excited to finally be off to Hogwarts. They had bits of both my looks and Luna’s. Lily was shorter and still had a trace of baby-fat around her face. Pandora looked a couple of years older than Lily, but she was actually the younger of the twins. Both had naturally loosely-curled black hair, but Pandora’s was long and she straightened it, and Lily kept hers cut short.

Lily saw me first, elbowed her sister, and they both came straight for me. Curious eyes followed both them and me; I guess my fame hadn’t dissipated much.

“Mum’s not going to make it is she?” Pandora asked, her lips quivering a bit.

“I’m quite sure she’ll be here before the train leaves.” I knelt and put my arms around both of them.

“Pffft, wanna bet? Mum missed our last birthday; off in Kathmandu or wherever with Rolf and she almost didn’t make Christmas last year.” She pulled a Sickle from her pocket.

“Yeah, I’ll take that bet.” I also took out a Sickle and we both handed them to Lily, who would hold the bet and give the coins to the winner.

“Again? Don’t you two get tired of this?” She laughed as she stuffed the two coins into the pocket of her robe. “And you shouldn’t have made that bet, Dora.” (Only she could call Pandora ‘Dora.’ Anyone else who tried got the glare of death, even her Mum.)

“Oh, why’s that?” Pandora looked at me suspiciously.

Lily laughed again. I could hear her little girl laugh still here, but also an older, wiser laugh. “I saw Mum’s Patronus talking to Dad through the window while you were putting away your trunk.”

“Cheater.” Pandora punched me lightly in the side.

I put my chin up in a haughty manner and spoke with a fake-posh accent. “It’s not cheating to use knowledge that your opponent doesn’t have.”

“Is that another of Shacklebolt’s quotes? If so, you should tell him it’s not very good.”

“Nope,” I said, “it’s one of my own, just made it up.”

“Mum!” Lily screamed and ran off down the platform. I turned just in time to see Pandora go streaming by me toward Luna, who was wending her way through the throngs of students and parents. She was wearing Muggle clothing; jeans, a black T-shirt, and the plaid over-shirt that Charlie had given me for Christmas about ten years ago. It was sun-faded and frayed around the cuffs. She’d repaired it with mismatched patches on the elbows. I smiled as I remembered all the other times she’d worn that shirt. I sometimes thought that she still wore it because it reminded her of our time together.

The girls finally reached her and Luna knelt and pulled them both into a tight hug. Her normally dirty blonde hair was sun-bleached and it spilled over and onto Lily as they embraced. She spoke quietly with the girls, then stood and took each of them by a hand. I watched as they walked over to me, Luna’s eyes taking in everything around her. To those who didn’t know her, she seemed disconnected, but I can tell you from personal experience, she noticed everything. Pandora unconsciously emulated her, and her head turned as she watched everyone, but still listened to what Luna was saying. Lily watched her Mum and sister instead, more focused on them than on the crowd.

“I’ll take that Sickle, now,” I said to Lily, who reached into her pocket and handed it to me along with the Sickle I had bet. I made of show of polishing them on my robes and Pandora glared at me, but I could see the smile behind the glare.

“Did you con our daughter again?” Luna asked.

I shook my head innocently. “Not me. Pandora bet that you wouldn’t be here on time; it’s not my fault that she didn’t know we’d spoken by Patronus.”

“You should know better than to bet against your father, Pandora,” Luna said, smiling. “He’s always surprised people, and after a point, you’d think they’d no longer test him. I don’t think some people think clearly.”

“Most people are bloody stupid,” Pandora said. I started to say something, but Luna beat me to it.

“Even if that were true, which it’s not, it’s not nice to say. If you keep up the know-it-all attitude, you’ll have a hard time making friends at Hogwarts.” Luna’s eyes went distant. “It wasn’t until my fourth year that I really felt like I had friends, but Ginny and Harry always treated me well, and so did Neville.”

“Picture of you and your family, Harry?” A familiar voice spoke from my shoulder.

I turned and shook Dennis Creevey’s hand. He had Colin’s old camera around his neck.

“As long as they don’t end up in the  _ Daily Prophet,  _ that’s great,” I told him, releasing his hand.

He had us all gather together on the edge of the platform and took a few pictures of us. Luna, Lily, Pandora and I all smiled and waved. He seemed pleased with the composition.

“I’ll send the prints to your office, Harry.” He left the platform, waving to other people he knew.

The train blew its whistle again, and I knelt to hug my daughters while they hugged their mother. I never wanted to let go, but then I thought about how I always pictured this with Luna as my wife and not Rolf’s and I broke the hug first. Lily met my eyes and she started to tear up. I don’t know if she understood what I felt or if she was just sad at leaving me and her mother. At least she’d have her sister there at school with her.

I stood and the girls let go of Luna. We all walked together to the train, and I kissed each of them goodbye on the cheek.

“Learn lots,” I told Pandora.

“Make good friends,” I said to Lily.

I stepped back and let Luna kiss and hug them. She whispered something to each of them that I couldn’t hear. They got on the train with a last wave and then disappeared down the corridor onto the train.

The Hogwarts Express pulled out with a shrill whistle and a blast of steam. Luna grabbed my hand and squeezed. We both understood each other again in that moment, I think; happy to see our daughters grow up and head off to school, but a little sad that they weren’t little girls anymore.

When the train had pulled around the corner and we couldn’t see it, we both turned and walked away hand in hand.

“How have you been, Harry?” Luna asked as we went through the wall back to the Muggle section of King’s Cross.

“Well enough, how about you?” I asked.

“Rolf and I are doing well. He’s still in Africa, searching for the Mokele Mbembe, and I’ll be joining him again after I visit my dad and then take care of a few banking issues. We’ve overdrawn again, even though there should be plenty of gold in our vault from our books. I don’t understand how we can always be overdrawn, but Bill’s going to help us out.”

“You’re overdrawn because neither of you are good with money. You should just have Bill manage your account and give you a monthly stipend from it,” I told her. It wasn’t the first time she and I had talked about money. When we lived together, she was always spending money we didn’t have on artwork, trips to exotic places, or to rescue animals. Not all of it was bad; it’s where our Kneazle came from.

“You’re probably right,” she chuckled. “It’s hard to think of money when you’re on the trail of some creature that everyone else assumes is a legend, but you know isn’t.”

We walked in silence for a bit, still holding each other’s hands.

“Coffee?” I asked, pointing at the fancy Muggle coffee shop.

“Sounds good,” she said. “You’ll have to order for me, when I order at these places, the Muggles all give me the strangest looks. You know what I like.”

We went in, Luna sat at a table, and I went to the queue to order a large black drip coffee for myself and a coconut-milk hazelnut latte for Luna.

I sat down across from her and slid her drink over to her. She took a tentative sip and then nodded. I knew she’d like it; I’d ordered similar things for her before and I still knew her tastes.

“Lily wrote to me recently,” she said.

I nodded. She wrote to her mother about once a week, and Pandora about once a month.

“She told me that you’ve been super busy at work recently and have been coming home late. She said you seemed stressed and unhappy lately.”

“Is that verbatim?” I asked.

Luna smiled wanly. “No, she said you seemed unhappy and pale and that you had been eating take-out instead of going over to eat with Nana Molly and the Weasleys. Are you okay?”

I thought before answering. Lying to Luna was pointless, as she could always tell when I was.

“Not really,” I said finally. “Some nutter is killing Death Eaters’ children and leaving ‘For the Greater Good’ written in their blood on the walls near them. Ritter and I’ve been trying to find out who it is and keep it out of the press at the same time. I’ve had to coordinate with MI-5 on this as they think it may be a terrorist, but it’s obviously someone with an axe to grind; I just hope it’s not someone I know.”

“You know it probably will be, though; don’t you?” she asked.

“Yeah,” I sighed and sipped at my coffee. I’d need it for the office today.

“Ritter’s also thinking about retiring soon, and then I’ll likely become Head Auror if I want the position.”

“But?” she asked; she could sense there was a ‘but’ coming.

“But, I’m not sure if I want to be Head Auror. If you’d asked me right out of school, I would have said that of course I wanted to. But lately, I’ve thought more about the girls and how much more I’d miss them, but also, now that they’re off to school it would only be over the summer, so I’m really conflicted.”

“When you come home, will you always come home to an empty house? I mean with the girls gone and Kaiya with them, won’t your house be quiet?” she asked. I knew she could read me.

“I can always go to the Burrow, or visit Ron and Hermione, but they’ve got children of their own, and Hermione is so busy, too. It seems like as we’ve all gotten older, we’ve lost touch a little. I mean, we’re all still friends and see each other a lot, but it’s not the same.”

“Is there no one you’d want to come home to?” she asked.

I shifted uncomfortably. The only person I’d wanted to come home to in the sense she meant was her. I don’t know if I was really over her or not.

She saw my eyes go down to my coffee and she understood.

“Harry, you’ve got to move on. It’s not good for you.” She put a hand under my chin and raised my face so our eyes met.

“Have you even been on a date since I left?”

I nodded. “Hermione and Ron each set me up a couple of times, but nothing clicked. I had dinner with them, a drink, maybe a laugh, but there was nothing there with any of them.”

“Keep trying, Harry. There’s someone out there for you. At least get laid, even if it’s not someone you plan to spend your life with, you can still have some fun. Not all relationships need to be forever.”

I choked on my coffee and when I recovered, I laughed bitterly.


	2. Pandora-Year 1

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Pandora and Lily ride the Hogwarts Express, make some friends, and discover the joy of flying.

We boarded the train and made our way to the compartment where we had stowed our trunks and the cat carrier with Kaiya in it. When we slid the door open, there were two older girls sitting on the bench across from Kaiya’s carrier. They had been talking, but when we opened the door, they stopped and looked at us. I figured them for third or fourth years. One was a blonde and the other had long black hair, darker even than mine and Lily’s. The blonde had a friendly, open look, but the brunette looked more guarded. I knew when they looked at Lily and I that they could tell we were sisters, but I wondered if they knew we were twins.

The blonde stood as she spoke and held out her hand. “Sorry, this was the only compartment in this section that wasn’t full. I hope you don’t mind sharing it with Melinda and me?” 

I looked quickly side-long at Lily and she shook her head.

“Not at all,” Lily said, taking the girl’s hand.

“I’m—,” Lily started to say, but the blonde interrupted.

“You’re the Lovegood-Potter twins; you’re Lily and your sister there is Pandora.” she said. “I’m Cecilia, and this is my friend Melinda.”

“Did you recognize us from the _Daily Prophet_?” I asked curiously, hoping that I wasn’t going to have to move to another compartment to avoid them, and glad that Grandpa Xeno didn’t publish pictures of us in _The Quibbler_ to preserve our privacy.

Her face reddened. “No, I saw you on the platform with your father and mother as Melinda and I settled in.”

“I recognized you from the _Prophet_ , though,” Melinda said. Her voice was slightly accented. Italian I thought, but I wasn’t sure.

She must have noticed me stiffen a bit and she held up her hands placatingly. “Don’t worry, we’re not stalkers, I just have a very good memory for faces. I’m an artist.” She dug around in her satchel and pulled out a pencil drawing of Hogwarts. It was quite good.

We shook hands all around and introduced ourselves.

“Your cat seems very friendly. I could hear it purring when we came in,” Cecilia said.

“I told you, that’s no cat, it’s a Kneazle,” Melinda said firmly.

“And I told you, students aren’t permitted to bring Kneazles, only cats,” Cecilia retorted.

“No, Melinda’s right; she’s a Kneazle and her name’s Kaiya. We got special permission to bring her. Sometimes there are advantages to having famous parents.” Lily opened the carrier and Kaiya rushed out onto her lap, purring and head-butting her.

“Ooo, she’s lovely. Does she like petting?” Melinda asked.

Lily nodded and Melinda moved to kneel in front of Lily to let Kaiya sniff her. Kaiya decided she was okay and lowered her head to Melinda’s hand and let her scratch under her chin and around her ears.

After a few seconds, Melinda returned to her seat. Kaiya looked around the compartment, leapt down from Lily’s lap and investigated everything, her plumy tail erect as she sniffed over and marked all the luggage with her cheeks. We watched her in silence for a moment, then Cecilia spoke again.

“Any thoughts about what House you’re going to be in?” she asked.

“Well, Dad was a Gryffindor and Mum was Ravenclaw,” I said. I thought for a moment. “I’m pretty sure I’m going to be in Ravenclaw, but Dad says that could come off as conceited, so I maybe shouldn’t tell people that.” We all chuckled. “Who knows? I’d be happy with any house but Slytherin, I think. How about you two? What House are you in?”

“I’m in Slytherin,” Melinda said. “I know you have reasons to think we’re evil, especially based on your father’s interactions with the Death Eaters, but we’re not all like that.”

I blushed a bit, and stammered out an apology, which she waved off.

“It’s okay, I’m used to the prejudice and I’m over it now.” She smiled and I knew I hadn’t actually hurt her feelings, but I could have and I felt bad for that.

“And I’m in Hufflepuff,” Cecilia said.

“I hope I’m in Hufflepuff,” Lily said, just like I knew she would. She and I had stayed up late several nights talking about which House we’d be in.

“It just seems like the most welcoming and most like family,” Lily said.

Cecilia nodded. “I like to think so, but I think any House could be like that. Melinda says the Slytherins are much friendlier with each other than you’d think, and the Gryffindors stick together like glue.”

“It really doesn’t matter what House you’re in, in the long run, as long as you want to make friends there, you’ll find them.” Melinda absently petted Kaiya as she spoke. I knew she couldn’t be a bad person, or Kaiya wouldn’t have tolerated her.

The rest of the train ride passed by fairly quickly, especially after the trolley came by and Lily and I squandered way too much money on candy. Melinda and Cecilia each only bought a small amount and they seem amused at how much we spent. When we got close to Hogwarts, a couple of Prefects stopped by the compartment and told us to get ready. We chivvied Kaiya back into her carrier and made sure all our luggage was at hand. When we got off the train, we heard Hagrid yelling for the first years. He smiled at us as we got on the boat with him and the other first years. He’d stopped by our house quite a bit when we were younger. I think he liked to talk about magical creatures with Mum, and he had a real friendship with our father. Dad said that Hagrid was someone you could always count on.

It was dark and cold on the boat, but the waning moon lit the dark lake a bit, and we had no trouble seeing with it and the ambient light leaking from the castle itself.

The short hike to the Great Hall was fascinating, and we passed by a bronze plaque that had Dad’s name on it, but we were rushed along before we could read it. Hagrid gathered us all in a group at the back of the Great Hall while the Sorting Hat sang some weird song about what the upcoming year would bring. Dad had said to listen closely to it, as it could sometimes be apt, but I didn’t really catch much of it.

The sorting started, and all too soon, the Hat called my sister’s name.

“Lovegood-Potter, Lily!” it shouted.

Lily let go of my hand and walked to the stool where the Sorting Hat sat, apparently confident, but I could read her slight nerves in the hesitancy of each step. She put the Hat on her head and I found myself unconsciously holding my breath as we waited. It seemed to take longer than it had for anyone before it, but that could have been my imagination. I let out the breath I’d been holding and breathed once, twice, thrice, then I lost count. The Hat’s slit-mouth opened.

“Hufflepuff!” it cried, like I knew it would.

Lily made her way to the Hufflepuff table where she was greeted warmly by Cecilia. I started walking before the Hat had even called my name.

“Lovegood-Potter, Pandora!” it shouted, almost into my ear.

I sat down and thrust the thing on my head.

_“Hmm,”_ a warm voice sounded in my head. _“Another Lovegood-Potter. You’ve got quite a brain here, and lots of curiosity, but you also have a burning need to prove yourself, I see.”_

_“Not Slytherin,”_ I thought back to it.

_“Ah, did you know your father said exactly the same thing to me? You’d be great in Slytherin, it would help you find your path, possibly more than you understand now.”_ It sounded smug.

_“Please, I’d rather be in Ravenclaw or Gryffindor.”_

_“Not Hufflepuff with your sister?”_ it asked.

_“No, I don’t think I’m the warm and fuzzy Hufflepuff type; do you?”_

It laughed. _“No, definitely not. I’m glad that you’re honest with yourself. I’m going to ask the same question of you that I asked your sister.”_

I gulped.

It continued. _“If you’re playing a game, and you don’t win, what do you take away from that?”_

I thought for a moment before answering. _“It’s always important to do your best, but I’ll always play to win. If I lose, it’s not always because of me, sometimes my opponent is better. I’d take that as an opportunity to learn and do better next time. It might upset me or hurt now, but I’ll be stronger for it in the long run.”_ I groaned internally. _“That sounded really pretentious, didn’t it? Also, it had to be quite different from what Lily told you.”_

_“Yes, quite different. You both have a competitive streak, but she’s more about the journey and you’re more about the results. One last question: would you cheat or seek an edge over your opponent that would advance you at their cost?”_

_“I wouldn’t ever cheat, but I might seek an edge on an opponent. Messing with their head or distracting them could be part of a game. But, no, I wouldn’t outright cheat.”_

I opened my eyes. I could tell it was about to announce my house.

“Ravenclaw!” It shouted.

I jumped off the stool, took the thing off my head, then made my way to the Ravenclaw table to their applause. I caught Lily’s eye at the Hufflepuff table and winked. I was excited and shaking, but also sad that Lily and I would be separated for the first time in our lives. I mean, we had been apart before this, often one at Mum’s and one at Dad’s, but that wasn’t the same.

We started class a couple of days later. Most of them were what I expected, with only Herbology being difficult for me because of my black thumb. The History of Magic class was dull, as Binns would just drone on and on, but the textbook itself was quite interesting. I would often surreptitiously start my homework for other classes while half-listening to Binns. Then two weeks into the year, we had our first flying class and everything changed forever.

It was a chilly day, and the sun was hidden behind sullen clouds that weren’t sure if they were going to bless us with their rain or not, but when I saw the broom I felt a heated thrill go through me. Dad had let both Lily and I try out his broom and we both seemed to feel a connection to it. He wouldn’t let us get more than ten feet off the ground, telling us that we’d learn more at Hogwarts, but I could tell it was something I wanted.

The brooms were already lined up and I took my place next to a nervous Slytherin girl. I was just about to try to calm her down some when Madam Hooch spoke.

“When I tell you, you will shout, ‘Up!’ and summon your broom into your hand,” she said. “Up!”

We all shouted in a ragged chorus. My broom leapt immediately to my hand and quivered there, like an excited dog. The Slytherin girl’s broom shot up and smacked her in the face. A few brooms were in hands, but many more just flopped around on the ground. Madam Hooch told the few of us who managed to properly summon our brooms to help the others. I walked the girl next to me through it, until she could bring her broom to hand. The class was nearly half over by the time Madam Hooch was satisfied and moved on to instructions on how to properly mount.

She passed through the students, correcting grips here and leg positions there. When she reached me, she smiled. “Lovegood-Potter, huh? It looks like you’re going to fly more like your father than your mother.” She laughed. “I never saw a more natural rider than your dad, except maybe Charlie Weasley, but your mother often insisted on flying side-saddle even though I told her how dangerous it was.”

“She still doesn’t fly well, Miss,” I said. “But when Dad flies, he seems to do well enough.”

“Your father could have been a professional Seeker,” Madam Hooch said, “but overall, I think we’re all glad he chose to do what he does now.”

After she had checked over everyone, she called me and a small, freckled Slytherin boy forward.

“We’re almost out of time today.” Most of the class groaned at her announcement. She held up her hand. “We’ll get to actually flying next time and most of you will get off the ground, but for today, we’re going to watch Miss Lovegood-Potter and Mister Selwyn. I believe they can be trusted to follow instructions, make a lap or two of the grounds and not get too high. I will pace you and make sure you’re safe.”

The Selwyn boy looked at me, gulped, turned back to Madam Hooch and nodded. I said, “Yes, Miss.”

We mounted and made a slow lap of the class, and then when Madam Hooch said we could go a bit faster, we sped up. That’s when I felt it. This was faster than Dad let us go and I could feel the broom had more to give. I sped up more and leaned into the turns. Selwyn fell back a bit, unwilling to go faster it seemed and he landed on the next lap. Madam Hooch pulled up next to me and ducked down on her broom, making herself more aerodynamic. I copied her and we went faster. After two more even quicker laps, she signaled for me to land.

“Very good Miss Lovegood-Potter and Mister Selwyn. Ten points to Ravenclaw and Slytherin both.” She turned to address the class. “That’s what you each can look forward to; the open sky and the feel of the world passing under you.”

As the class filed out, she stopped me and Selwyn. “Have either of you thought about Quidditch? First years can’t play, but it’s something to work toward for next year.”

Selwyn kept his head down, but nodded shyly, but I answered, “If that’s what flying is like every time, then I will be trying out next year.”

“I will be running an extra class once a week for first years who show promise, if you want to join. You’ll be learning from me and the captains of the Quidditch teams, not just about flying, but also about Quidditch strategy. You’ll have to keep your marks up to stay in the class, but if you two are as good in your classes as you are at flying, then that shouldn’t be a problem.”

Selwyn nodded again and I said, “Understood, Miss.”

She smiled and sent us on our way.

Later at dinner, Lily came up to me. I could tell she was excited about something.

“You had your first flying lesson today, too?” she asked. I nodded and smiled.

“Madame Hooch wants me to take an extra class to learn about flying and Quidditch once a week,” Lily said. I was about to say something, but she kept talking. “She said I was as good as Dad or Charlie Weasley and that you were, too.”

“It was amazing, Lils,” I said. “Dad never let us go that fast, and I could feel that there was more, so much more that I could do on the broom.”

Lily pursed her lips and thought. “I know what you mean. It wasn’t like just flying around the back garden with Dad watching us; it was a kind of freedom.”

“Looking forward to having at least one class with you then,” I said. She nodded and hugged me, then went back to the Hufflepuff table for dinner.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you to MuggleMaybe for beta reading this chapter.


	3. Lily--Summer between Year 1 and Year 2

We’d gotten back to London late and Dad looked really tired when he picked us up from the Hogwarts Express. Both Dora and I wanted to pester him about going to the Quidditch camp that Madam Hooch had told us about, but we both could see he was preoccupied.

He’d hugged us, given us both kisses, and asked in a perfunctory way how the school year had been, but I could see the shadow in his eyes. I wished that Mum had been here, as she would have been able to get him to talk about it. She was the only one who could ever draw him out of his own mind; I wanted to be able to do that, but I just didn’t know how.

Dad took us home in a Ministry car. During the drive, he was quiet, almost grimly so. Whenever Pandora or I would ask him a question or try to converse with him, he would be as terse as possible. Finally, Pandora had had enough.

“What’s going on?” she asked, bluntly.

“Nothing,” Dad said, automatically.

“Don’t lie, Daddy,” I said. “We both can tell something is bothering you.”

“It’s a case at work…” he began.

“Ah,” Dora said, “the Death Eaters’ children killings.”

He turned to her and looked her in the eye before turning his attention back to the road. “Yes, the Death Eaters’ children killings. Ritter and I are trying to catch the bastard who’s doing it, and the Muggle press is starting to take notice now, too.” He shook his head like a dog who had just had a bath. “Ritter wants to retire and hand me the Head Auror job, but he doesn’t want to do it until the killer is caught.”

“Sorry,” I said. “What can Dora and I do for you?”

He sighed. “Just be there for me, be there when I need you and stay safe.” He looked at me in the rear-view mirror, and I met his green, green eyes, so much like Dora’s and mine. “Especially stay safe. He hasn’t shown any interest in killing anyone from our side of the war, but he might target you two or Ritter’s children, so we’re taking some extra precautions.”

“You mean like the car that’s trailing us?” I asked. I had noticed a large, black SUV following us at a respectful distance. “That looks like Gruenwald driving it?”

He laughed. “Noticed that, did you? Keep your eyes open like that and you’ll both be fine.” He sighed again. “I’m sorry this isn’t the reunion I pictured. I wanted to take you both out for late-night ice cream or breakfast for dinner, but with the heightened security, we’re going to go straight home.”

“Okay, Daddy,” Dora said. The rest of the drive went in relative silence. When we got home, we had a snack of crisps and then went to bed. Dad tucked us in like he’d done when we were much younger. After he had gone back to his work at the kitchen table, I snuck down the hallway into Dora’s room and sat on her bed with her, where we whispered for a while and then I went back to my room and slept poorly.

I had a nightmare about a masked man holding a wand to Dora’s throat and woke up just as a red ray came out of it. I was stifling in my blankets, sweating heavily, so I got up, opened the curtains and window. It was just before dawn and the air was fresh and sweet. Dew beaded on the roses just outside my window and I could smell the perfume, even though a lot of the buds had died off already.

I grabbed the Quidditch strategy book that I had asked Daddy to send me, and read from it until I felt sleepy again. I closed the curtains, but kept the window open, climbed back into my blankets and fell asleep.

I was awakened by a loud bang. Dad had come in and slammed my window shut. He saw me sit up in fright and glared at me.

“You shouldn’t be sleeping with your window open like that! I thought I taught you better!” He was as angry at me as I’d ever seen him.

“Sorry, Daddy,” I said. “It was so hot in here so I opened it for fresh air this morning and just forgot to close it.”

His anger dissipated immediately, like someone had flipped a switch. He sat down and put an arm around me.

“I’m sorry, Lils,” he said, calling me by his sometimes nickname for me. “I’m just worried and didn’t mean to snap like that.”

I side-hugged him. “It’s all right; I understand and I’ll be more careful.”

“I’m going to have to go back to work Monday, or maybe earlier if something comes up and I want to know that you and Pandora will be safe, but I’m not sure the best way.” I let go of the hug.

He leaned in and we sat with shoulders bumping. “I mean, I know that Nana Molly and Grandpa Arthur would be happy to look after you, but I don’t want to burden them too much, either.”

“Oho, Dora and I are burdens now?” I asked jokingly.

He laughed; he knew I was joking. “You know what I mean,” he said.

“I may have a solution for a large part of the summer,” I said and took the Quidditch Camp pamphlet out from under my pillow, where I had stashed it the night before.

He took it and read it through quickly. I saw his mouth quirk up in a brief smile at a couple of points and knew it must be because he saw it was Oliver Wood’s camp. I had read up on the Hogwarts’ Quidditch league from Dad’s years, and Oliver had been the captain on some of Dad’s Cup-winning teams.

“I wondered if you two knew about this. He’s requested to have off-duty Hit Wizards and Aurors as security and he would pay the rates. I had to tell him no on the Aurors since we don’t have the manpower right now, but he did hire a couple of former Aurors as security, people that I trust. Also, I see this is happening at the pitch in Cornwall, and that’s good, it has the second best security of all them, after the one at Hogwarts.”

He laughed. “And it has the best player protection charms, even better than Hogwarts.” He shook his head. “Sometimes I think that Hogwarts wants a greater threat of injury to promote safer play being learned.”

“I think it’s more that the pro players don’t want to fall to their deaths and negotiated better playing conditions,” I said. He looked at me sharply and I pointed to the updated Quidditch through the Ages book on my bedside table.

“I take it both of you want to go?” he asked.

“Yes, please,” Dora’s voice came from my doorway. She was still in her nightgown and her hair was rumpled from sleep. “We both really want to go and we thought it would be a good way to stay out of your hair during the summer without having to go live with Mum and Rolf for the entire summer, although we want to do that for at least part of it, too.”

She came in and sat on my bed on the other side of Dad. He leaned over and kissed the top of her head and hugged her.

“I’m going to check it out and if it looks safe, I’m good with you going.”

A couple of days later, after dinner, while he and I were doing the washing up and Dora was at the table reading a book on potion-making, Daddy said, “I’ve looked over their security and talked with Oliver and the ex-Aurors he’s hired as security and I’m convinced that they’re good. You’ll be able to go the Quidditch camp.” Dora dropped her wand on the table and rushed Dad to hug him. I bumped him with a hip since my hands were covered in dish suds.

“Thanks, Daddy,” I said at the same time as Dora.

“It was good to see Oliver again and I’m looking forward to seeing both of you on your new brooms.” He smiled.

Both Dora and I looked around. “New brooms?” I asked.

He nodded. “In the shed, go ahead and look, but no flying until I get out there with you, okay?”

I put the washcloth in the sink, drained the water, and followed Dora out to the shed. She yanked the door open and there were two identically wrapped bundles in there. I grabbed the one with my name on it and slowly unwrapped it while Dora ripped at the brown paper around hers.

“It’s a Nimbus 2008!” Dora shouted, ruining my surprise since I wasn’t done opening mine and I was sure it was the same. She finished ripping her paper off and commanded the broom to hover at her side just as I opened the the back end of mine, revealing different bristles. I stopped, puzzled, and Dora leaned over my shoulder.

She mimed ripping at the paper, and I swatted her hand away, laughing. Then, I ripped the paper the rest of the way off mine in a long tear. Mine was a Comet 360, with Quidditch mods rather than the tricked out racing model. They were both used, but in pristine condition.

I flipped mine upright and examined it closely. The bristles were tight and as far as I could tell, the flight and stabilization charms were intact and working. I ran my fingers down the shaft, checking for splinters, but it had been recently re-sanded and waxed.

“Why are they different?” Dora asked.

“Because I actually read your letters and thought that they’d be the right brooms for each of you.” Dad’s voice came from behind me. I turned and he was standing there with his Firebolt Supreme prototype model that he’d been given as a gift from the company years ago.

“The Nimbus 2008 has a higher top speed, but doesn’t corner quite as well as your Comet 360,” he said, pointing at my broom. “The stabilization charm on the Comet is slightly better, but the Nimbus is more comfortable.” He grinned. “Of course, neither of them is as good as my Firebolt, but I’m an expert rider,” he said faux-pompously to make Dora and I laugh.

“Let’s see what you’ve got.” He reached past me into the shed and pulled out a Quaffle and his helmet. He activated the charms on the Quaffle, put on the helmet and mounted his Firebolt. I handed Dora her helmet and put mine on. We met each other’s eyes and got on. I could feel the power of the broom; it wanted to fly--no, it wanted to  _ ZOOM! _

“No more than 15 feet for now, until I’m convinced that Madame Hooch’s reports were right,” he said and chucked the Quaffle hard at me as he zipped by. I caught it one-handed as I was kicking off the ground and then passed it over my shoulder to Dora who had lifted off as well.

We all made simple passes of the garden passing the Quaffle back and forth. Dad called out a formation and took the lead position in it with Dora and me flanking behind and slightly above him. At a whistle he veered off, leaving the Quaffle hanging in mid-air for a second. Dora grabbed it and in one motion flipped it to me and I scored in an improvised goal in a tree.

We played all afternoon, the sun swinging down toward the horizon, with its rays gleaming off our new brooms. It was one of the best days with Dad since Mum had left. He laughed and shouted instructions and encouragement to us and genuinely enjoyed himself. When it became too twilit to see, he called us down.

“I’d forgotten what that was like; to fly and play just for the hell of it.” He smiled broadly and grabbed us in a sweaty embrace as we put away our equipment. He watched as both Dora and I checked over our brooms for a post-ride inspection and he did the same with his. He grabbed a de-crimper from the toolbox in the shed and corrected a bristle on his, but Dora’s and mine were still in perfect shape.

“I have another surprise for you both,” he said as we went through the door back to the kitchen. “Your Mum and Rolf will be coming back early and will be here next week, so you’ll be able to see them both before your Quidditch camp starts up.”

We went back into the house and he made scones while Dora and I sliced and macerated some strawberries.

Two weeks later, we took a Portkey to the pitch in Cornwall and went through the security there, with Dad greeting his old Auror buddies. We got our security badges from them that would allow us and only us through the Muggle-repellent wards around the pitch and went into the reception area.

A middle-aged woman with long black hair was marking something off on a list and didn’t look up when we came in.

“I’ll be right with you,” she said in a thick, but soft Scottish accent.

“Take your time, Cho,” Dad said, smiling oddly.

She looked up, startled, regained her composure quickly and returned his smile. She walked from behind the table with sure, long, agile strides and hugged Dad tightly. He returned the hug and kissed her cheeks. They both laughed with obvious joy as he pushed her back to arms length to get a better look at her and she at him.

“It’s been what...about eight years?” Dad asked.

“Seven,” she replied. “Since the ten year anniversary.”

“How’s your husband, umm...Hugh?” he asked.

She looked down and answered softly, “He died two years ago. He was coming back from a workout and just collapsed. Aneurysm. Neither the Muggle doctors nor the Healers could help him.”

Dad pulled her back into a hug. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know and I should have. I should have kept in better touch with you and the rest of the D.A.”

She let him hold her for a few seconds, then broke the embrace and went back to sit behind the table. Her shoulders were shaking slightly, but she was keeping it together.

“Your daughters are so much bigger than the last time I saw them.” She picked up a Muggle-style biro and marked something on a sheet of paper. She looked at me first.

“Lily?” she asked.

I nodded.

“And you’re obviously Pandora. Glad to meet you both again. I’m an old friend of your Dad’s and your Mum’s. Luna and I were both in Ravenclaw together, although she was two years behind me. We also were both in the D.A. with your Dad.”

“I’m in Ravenclaw, too,” Dora told her, “and Lily’s in Hufflepuff.”

“My first real boyfriend was a Hufflepuff,” she said, with a thickness to her voice that told me he had likely died, probably in the war with Voldemort. I’d have to ask Dad about it later, because I caught the look in his eye and the very slight shake of his head warning Dora and me not ask about it.

She squared her shoulders and set to the task of checking our letters of recommendation from Madame Hooch, and asking us questions about where we thought we were in our Quidditch training. Eventually satisfied, she sent us down to the pitch to join the other students. We hugged Daddy goodbye, shouldered our brooms, and went through the tunnel into the dark tunnel before emerging into a bright sunlit pitch with shining goalposts at either end.

The last I saw of my Dad that day, he had pulled a chair up next to Cho and had his arm around her while they were talking softly.

Oliver Wood was waiting for us on the pitch with a slim Indian man just behind him.

“Alright, Lovegood-Potters, I’ve heard a lot about you from Madame Hooch, and your Da” he said in his Scottish accent. If I hadn't seen the instructor list in the pamphlet, I would have wondered if all the instructors were Scots.

“I want to see you go through some basic flying drills and we’ll decide what flying level instruction you need.” He pointed at the instructors around the pitch. 

“That’s Mr Roberston; he’ll be teaching flying.” Mr Robertson was on the far side of the pitch, leading some students through a drill.

“That’s Mr Selwyn and he’ll be teaching the Beaters specifically,” he said pointing at a large man holding a Beater’s bat and talking to a different group. I’d seen Mr Selwyn before at King’s Cross, picking up his son. I wondered briefly his son was going to grow to be as big as his dad.

“And this is Mr Aulakh, who will be teaching the Chasers.”

Mr Aulakh stepped from behind Oliver and shook our hands. "Hope you want to score goals."

“I will be teaching general strategy and working with the Keepers," Oliver told us.

Cho walked from the tunnel onto the pitch.

“And Ms Chang will be teaching the Seekers, and will also be in charge of conditioning.” I wondered if she’d never taken her husband’s name or if she’d changed it back after his death, but before I could chase the thought, Oliver had blown his whistle for us all to mount.

After Dora and I had made a couple of passes with Oliver, he handed us off to Mr Aulakh, who ran us through some more complicated flying. Soon, he reached the limits of what Dora and I knew how to do. Dora was faster than I was, but I was better at changing pace and cornering, some of which was down to our brooms and some of it down to natural ability.

Oliver put us through some Keeper drills, and Dora did slightly better here than I did, but neither of us seemed to have the instincts needed to be a Keeper. Likewise, Mr Selwyn dismissed us out-of-hand as ‘too small’ to be Beaters. I didn’t want to be a Beater anyway; Chaser or Seeker looked much more fun. Dora and I had talked and we both wanted to be Chasers. We wanted to score goals, it was that simple.

Oliver eventually put us into an intermediate flying class with mostly thirteen- and fourteen-year olds and the Chaser and Seeker specific classes. We also took a strategy class with the whole school. All told, it was about thirty kids.

Mr Aulakh had played on three different pro teams and was rehabbing from an arm injury. I’d read about his career and learning from him was going to be exciting. We were going through some individual drills with him and when Dora landed, I took the opportunity to ask him something I’d been wondering about since I’d seen his name in the pamphlet.

“Excuse me, sir. Before the Asian semi-finals in ‘06, did you really tell Gurwara that Mumbai had no chance?”

He looked down at me, his face crinkling with laughter.

“You sound like some of the reporters at the time.” He barked a laugh. “Yes, I did.”

He clapped his hands in a move that meant, ‘gather round.’ We all sat in a semi-circle at his feet.

“Ms Lovegood-Potter asked me about the incident before the ‘06 Asian semi-finals. Yes, I really did tell Gurwara that Mumbai had no chance. Does anyone know why?”

Hands were raised. He pointed to Selwyn, who answered. “To undermine his confidence?”

“Yes, partially true. Anyone else?”

I raised my hand and he picked me. “Miss Lovegood-Potter.”

“Also to boost your confidence?”

“Also yes, but,” he paused, “also because he had no chance.”

We all laughed. The rest of the class passed quickly and we went to conditioning class. Cho gave us all age- and gender-specific exercises and made a point of telling us not to go to more advanced ones without approval. Dora and I also had her Seeker class.

“Now, you’ll hear a lot of yobs saying you don’t have to be in shape to play Quidditch, but it’s not true. Quidditch is so often a sport of endurance that the better shape you’re in, the better you’ll play. It’ll also make it so you’re less likely to get injured.”

One of the male Beater students raised his hand. “Why are  _ you  _ teaching this instead of a man? Wouldn’t I learn more from a man?”

“No,” Cho said with a dangerous tone in her voice. “I shouldn’t need to tell you my qualifications, but I will. I am an assistant trainer with the Harpies. I have a degree in Kinesiology from the University of Edinburgh, and certifications in personal training. I was a trainer with a Muggle football team, won an award for best trainer in the league when they won their cup and were moved to a higher league, and was a trainer for gymnasts and fencers for the Muggle Olympic games.”

Then she ran us until we were all aching and tired. Her Seeker classes were interesting; I didn’t realize there was actually such deep strategy to it and actually enjoyed trying to find the Snitch when we broke out into small groups. I found myself trying to earn praise from Cho and Mr Aulakh in particular.

At the end of the summer, there was going to matches for Under-14’s and Under-17’s and both Dora and I wanted to be starting Chasers on the U-14’s. We both knuckled down and pushed ourselves hard


	4. Harry--Between 1st and 2nd Year

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Harry watches Lily and Pandora in the camp's U-14 match with Luna, Cho and Rolf. Harry and Cho have a second date.

I leaned on the railing in front of my seat and watched the camp’s Under-14, friendly match. Lily and Pandora worked well together and they kept the opposing Chasers and Keeper off-balance. They passed the Quaffle between them with only a few hand gestures for communication and soon their team was up 50-Nil. Cho entered the box where I sat with Luna and Rolf. She smiled and waved at me and I pointed at the empty seat next to me. She made her way through the row of spectators and sat next to me.

“Thanks for saving me a seat,” she said.

“No problem,” I replied. “I was worried that you wouldn’t make it when you weren’t here for the start of the match.”

“Your girls saw me arrive and they wanted some last minute advice. It took me a bit to get here from the locker room. I see I’ve missed a lot in that time.” She pointed at the scoreboard which flipped over to 50-10.

Lily took the re-entry pass from the Keeper and rushed down the pitch, deftly avoiding a hard-hit Bludger from the other team. She got cut off by an opposing Chaser, but Pandora was there flying just a bit down and to the right, and Lily flipped the Quaffle to her, slid into a sloth-grip, and flew just under the opposing Chaser, then Pandora passed the Quaffle back to her. She pulled up quickly as she flew into the scoring area at the center ring, and the Keeper flinched slightly left. She took advantage of his error and scored by flinging the Quaffle just to his left. It clanged off the edge of the center ring, then ricocheted through. The scoreboard flipped to 60-10.

“Looks like those last minute tips paid off,” I said, grinning. Cho blushed a bit and nodded.

She shouted back over the din of the crowd. “I really don’t think they needed it. I’ve never seen two more natural players, including you and Cedric! They’ll both make their Hogwarts house teams for sure.”

I leaned over to talk into her ear. “Still, I don’t think they’d be this good without having gone to your Quidditch camp.”

“It’s Oliver’s camp, not mine,” she said. “I’m just one of the instructors.”

“The girls tell me you’re their favorite.”

I saw the flesh on her arms goose-pimple, and thought it was maybe from my breath on her ear and neck. I liked that and I touched her arm lightly as I spoke. I felt the same twinge now as I did when I was fourteen talking to her. They say you never forget your first crush and it seemed that way with me; or maybe it was just lust.

“Really, you and Oliver seem to have a way with training that seems to get through to the kids.” She flinched back a bit this time.

“Thanks. I still think it’s more Oliver than me, though.” She put her other hand over mine on her arm. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Luna watching us with a small smile on her face.

We watched the rest of the match, with our arms pressed up next to each other and talked with our heads close. The match quickly got out of hand. Lily and Pandora’s team went up 250-60 and the result would be in the bag, even if the other team caught the Snitch. Lily flew with a natural grace and Pandora with a certain type of precise determination. Whenever the other team tried to double-team one of the girls, their third Chaser came open and Lily or Pandora just passed it to him and he was very nearly as good as the girls.

When Pandora scored a particularly good goal, both Cho and I jumped up and she hugged me. I held the hug for just a moment longer than I think she was expecting. I saw a red flush on her neck.

“Luna is grinning at us,” she whispered into my ear.

“She notices everything,” I whispered back.

“Is there something here to notice?” Cho asked.

“I think there might be,” I replied.

We sat back down, and Cho grabbed my hand and intertwined her fingers with hers. I squeezed lightly and she smiled.

We held hands the rest of the match, which was soon over. The other Seeker had caught the Snitch, but it was much too late and the final score stood at 360-220. Lily had scored 15 goals, Pandora 12, their other Chaser 8 and the opposing team had an own goal.

“I’ve got to go down and talk to the team for a moment,” Cho said. “Would you like to get some dinner afterwards?”

I shook my head. “I’ve got to take the girls back home and I have work left at the office.”

“We can take the girls tonight,” Rolf said from behind me. He always moved with a quiet, feline grace. “We’re going to be staying at Xenophilius’s place while he’s in Norway, and you know how much the girls love it there.”

“And I think whatever you have waiting at the office can wait, can’t it?” Luna asked. “I’ll bet it’s just paperwork anyway.”

“Thanks. You’re sure it’s no trouble?” I asked Rolf.

He smiled broadly, and I remembered why I couldn’t hate him, even though he’d taken Luna from me. (Well I guess,  _ technically, _ he didn’t take Luna from me, but sometimes I still felt that way.)

“Not at all, Harry,” he said, helping Luna into her multi-colored coat.

I turned back to Cho, who had been watching this exchange.

“I would love dinner, thanks. I’ll wait for you outside the locker rooms?” I asked.

She nodded and squeezed my hand again before leaving.

Luna, Rolf and I made our way down the stairs and waited outside the locker room. It wasn’t long before Lily and Pandora came out.

They ran to us, Pandora hugging me and Lily hugging Luna, then they switched.

“Great game, both of you,” I told them and they beamed. “You’re both way better than I was at your age.” We made some small talk about the game for a while, but I kept watching the door of the locker room.

Cho came out, talking to the third Seeker, whose name I could still not remember. He smiled when Cho said something to him. She ruffled his hair and he ran off to his parents, jabbering excitedly. Cho smiled when she saw me with the girls, and I know that Lily noticed because she turned back to me and grinned in the same way that Luna had been earlier.

“I’m guessing we’re going to go back with Mum and Rolf tonight,” she said.

“What? Why?” Pandora asked turning toward her sister, then me.

“Dad’s got a date tonight, I think,” Lily said.

I blushed and Pandora said, “Ooo, good for you, have fun. Will we actually meet the woman this time?”

Cho reached us and stood by me, leaning slightly into my side. I saw Pandora’s eyes widen a bit in understanding.

When we were hugging our goodbyes, Lily whispered in my ear, “We both like her.”

After Lily and Pandora had left with Luna and Rolf, I grabbed Cho’s hand and we talked about the match for a few minutes and how the girls were improving every day.

“They both should make their house teams next year,” she said. Now that we weren’t in a crowd, I could smell a spicy, floral perfume. 

“What would you like for dinner?” I asked.

“Let’s keep it light?” she suggested and we started walking aimlessly away from the pitch.

“I know a great tapas place in Muggle London if that sounds good? It can be as light or heavy as you want.” We passed through security and the anti-Muggle wards and looked back at the pitch which now looked like an abandoned factory with a large, cracked parking lot.

“Sure,” she said.

“Do you mind side-along Apparition?” I asked. She shook her head.

“Hold tight,” I said. I pulled my wand, she grabbed me, and at her touch, I almost lost my concentration. I spun and we reappeared in an alley in a designated safe space for Apparition. Cho looked around curiously.

“It’s just a short walk,” I said, but she didn’t make any move to release me.

“You smell good,” she said, slightly huskily, “like cinnamon or rosemary, I think?” She leaned closer and sniffed my hair.

“I...it could be my aftershave, I think?” I stuttered.

She laughed. “I think it’s just you. When I smelled it, it brought back a flood of memories from Hogwarts.”

“It’s the same with me,” I said. I lowered my head slightly and kissed her forehead. She lifted her head and our lips met in a gentle kiss, then she pulled back and we set off down the alley, hand in hand.

“That was much better than our first kiss,” I laughed.

She smiled. “I was a fucking mess. Cedric had just died a few months before, I fancied you, and when we kissed after the D.A. meeting, it was like something broke in me. And then, when we went on our date, I was still so conflicted. When you said you wanted to meet Hermione, it just became rage. I should have known you weren’t interested in her that way, but everyone thought you two would get together eventually, and I guess I believed it somewhere deep down, too.”

She laughed ruefully. “Looking back, I can see it was always her and Ron, but at the time, I just saw you hanging out with her all the time and Ron just seemed to be there, but not a part of it.”

“Hermione’s the sister I never had, and I never had feelings for her that way. After that date with you went so wrong, I met Luna on the way back and that’s when she and I started noticing each other.”

I stopped and she did too. “I don’t think you or I were ready for relationship then, at least not with each other. I was young and angry at everything and you were struggling with Cedric’s death and your feelings for me and the D.A and Umbridge and Marietta and everything else, so it just wasn’t the right time.”

“Maybe now it is,” she said, and we started walking again.

She smiled when she saw the restaurant. It was full of Muggle hipsters, the men almost universally bearded and dressed in casual clothes that nonetheless looked fashionable. The women were almost all in a type of semi-retro boho chic that Pandora had tried talking to me about. I guess I had listened more carefully to her than I thought.

“This doesn’t seem like your kind of place,” she said, looking down at my faded jeans, plain yellow T-shirt and light leather jacket.

“The ambience is weird, but the food is good. They’ll just think I’m ironically dressing down or something,” I said with a smirk. “I found this place when I was doing an undercover gig in the Muggle community. I grew a beard for it as part of my disguise. I thought it looked okay, but whenever Luna saw it she’d laugh herself hoarse.”

We were shown in by a greeter in a plaid overshirt who showed us to our seats. The waiter appeared and took our drink orders; white wine for Cho and a light lager for me. I recognized him from being here before. He looked at me like he was trying to place me. When he came back with our drinks to take our food order, he asked, “Harold, right?”

“Harry,” I said.

He snapped his fingers. “That’s right. I almost didn’t recognize you without your beard.” He turned to Cho. “This is a good man. He stopped a robbery here one day, just absolutely laid one of them out with punch and did something to the other one, some kind of nerve strike or something.”

Cho smiled. “That sounds like Harry. He was like that in school, too.”

“Your food tonight’s on the house, I’ll have the chef bring out his best assortment.” He turned and went to the kitchen.

“What really happened?” Cho whispered.

“I was here watching some black-market sales of cursed artifacts to Muggles and two guys came in with pistols. I stunned one of them silently from under the table while everyone else took cover and when his partner looked the other way, I hit him with a full wine bottle. It blew my cover as one of the sellers saw the stunner and Disapparated. We caught him later and put a stop to the ring, but we couldn’t flip him to go further up the chain. The Muggle gunmen went down for armed robbery.” I sipped my beer.

As we waited for our food, we chatted about our lives since Hogwarts. I told her about Luna and I, and our lives together and then our breakup. She said she knew a lot of it, since it had been in the gossip columns. I told her some stories about the girls and she laughed at the one where Ron had called Luna “Loony” and Pandora told him to stop being a wanker.

I knew that after the Battle of Hogwarts, she’d left the wizarding world for a bit and met her Muggle husband there, but I learned the specifics. She’d felt aimless for a long time, but her mother and father supported her while she found herself. She took courses in kinesiology and personal training. After getting her certification, she got a position as a trainer in a gym and that’s where she met Hugh. They got married after only six months and he’d been pleased to find out that magic was real, even though Cho wasn’t really active in wizarding community.

Our food came and as we ate the appetizer-sized portions, she continued. Hugh had been hired as a trainer for a minor football team and Cho also got a gig with another team. The team Cho worked with won their division and got moved up. After that, she decided to apply as a trainer for the Olympic games. She’d impressed the staff and had been asked to stay on after the games, but soon after, Hugh died. He’d been working out and it had ruptured an aneurysm that they hadn’t known about. He died on the walk back to their flat. After that, she’d come back to the wizarding world and had hired on as an assistant trainer for the Harpies, and when Oliver started his school, she got a job at his camp for the off-season and had been there just under a year.

I squeezed her hand and she leaned into me.

The waiter brought us a bottle of wine and I switched over to it instead of beer. We made small talk the rest of the night at the table. Even though the meal was on the house, I left a large gratuity for the wait staff and chef. They packed up the rest in to-go containers and we went back to the alley to Disapparate.

“Where’s home now?” I asked, “Cornwall?”

She shook her head. “Edinburgh. It’s a bit too far for me to Apparate in one shot. I’ll have to take a couple of hops.”

“I can do it in one, if you trust me to.”

She looked directly at me. “You can Apparate long-distance from London to Edinburgh?”

I nodded. “As an Auror, you have to be able to Apparate long-distance at times, and I’ve had lots of practice.”

“Okay, if you’ll take us to Edinburgh, then I’ll Apparate us to my flat from there?” she asked.

“Sounds good,” I said and embraced her tightly, more tightly than honestly needed.

I turned and we appeared in Edinburgh in an unused office space. I started to pull back so Cho could get her bearings, but she held me tight. I looked down and she raised her face and kissed me, long and hard. I could taste the wine and garlic and spices from the food, but also could taste her. She pulled back to catch her breath and I kissed her on the neck, just under her ear, then went back to kissing her mouth. Finally, we broke apart.

She looked out the window at a grey rainy Edinburgh night. I stood next to her and put my arm around her waist. 

“Did you want to come up?” she asked quietly.

“Yes,” I said and wrapped her in my arms. We kissed again, this time more passionately.

She took her wand from her purse and we Apparated just inside the door to her flat. Her building was old and brick. I looked around the entryway and illuminated a lantern with my wand. A tuxedo cat came to greet Cho with a meow. She disappeared into the kitchen amidst a tail-up flurry of purring and meowing. I walked into the living room and stood waiting for her. I could hear a plate being put down for the cat and water running. After a few minutes, she came out with a bottle of brandy and two snifters.

I took my coat off and laid it over an overstuffed armchair. I sat on the comfortable green couch and she snuggled up next to me. I poured us each a brandy and we sipped it as we snogged like teenagers.

“I don’t usually invite men up on a first date, but then I remembered this is our second date,” she giggled.

“And I never go up on a first date,” I said as I kissed her again.

She stood suddenly, then sat back down, straddling me on the couch. She ran her hands under my shirt and lifted it off. I did the same for her and she unhooked her bra.

“I must admit, I thought about this when I was a teenager,” I told her.

“Me too,” she said, lowering her mouth to kiss down my chest.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is un-betaed. Any errors are mine and mine alone.


	5. Lily-Second Year

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lily tries out for the Ravenclaw Quidditch team. She discovers something about herself.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you to sapphicsunrise for answering a lot of questions about Lily for this chapter and to poppunkpadfoot and rumplestiltskin for betaing this for me.

Mr Creevey had just finished taking our picture again and Dad was talking with him when the Hogwarts Express signalled five minutes to departure with two quick blasts of its whistle. Dora and I had just started to say goodbye to Mum, Rolf and Dad when Cho came rushing in, obviously just from a training session with the Harpies, and gave us both a big hug.

“I think both of you should make your teams this year, but remember that if you don’t, it’s not the end of the world and there’s always next year.” She pulled back from us, stood, and took Dad’s hand. I felt a strange twinge of jealousy and blushed, unsure of why.

“Typical positive B.S,” Dora said, laughing.

“Pandora!” Dad said, with a slight smile. “Cho was just trying to make you feel good about your chances.”

Dora grinned at him. “Want to make a bet?”

“Not this time,” Dad said. “I think you’ll both make your teams, and I don’t want to bet against my own daughters anyway.”

Dora stuck her tongue out at him, then hugged him. When she’d finished, I hugged him too. Then we hugged and kissed Mum goodbye.

“Also, don’t forget your studies,” Rolf said. “There’s more to life than Quidditch.”

Dora met my eye sidelong and her mouth crinkled. She was getting top marks in most of her classes and I was doing fine. Charms was my best class, Defence Against the Dark Arts my second best and all the rest were okay except Potions. I just didn’t have the knack for it. It was too much like baking for my liking; I preferred improvisation, but that was dangerous in potion-making.

We waved our final goodbyes and boarded. Cecilia, Melinda, and Sally were all waiting in the compartment when Dora and I boarded the train. I had met Sally that very first day after being sorted into Hufflepuff and we’d become inseparable instantly. I called her my ‘other twin,’ and Dora didn’t mind. Sally was just a bit taller than me, with a short bob of light blonde hair and a friendly smile that never faltered. It was hard for me to believe that she was almost a full year younger than me, since she always seemed the wiser of us.

Dora sat down Kaiya’s carrier and let her out. She immediately jumped into Sally’s lap to be petted and she head-butted Sally vigorously. Cecilia reached over and scratched Kaiya under the chin as Sally rubbed behind Kaiya’s ears. The loud, thrumming purr filled the entire compartment. Melinda greeted us with her slight accent.

“Did you both have a good summer?” she asked.

“It was the best,” Dora said. “Lily and I went to Quidditch camp and it was the best.” (She only repeated herself like that if she was excited).

“I know...I know,” Sally said, rolling her eyes in pretend exasperation. “Lily only wrote to me about it every bloody day.”

“Language, Dahl,” Cecilia said mock-haughtily to Sally. She pulled a Prefect badge from her robe’s pocket and pinned it on. “I wouldn’t want to have to dock my own house points.” Melinda broke into laughter first, then all of us. Hugs went all around before Cecilia rose.

“I really do have to go to a Prefect’s meeting and then patrol. I won’t see much of you until we get to Hogwarts.” She leaned over and kissed Melinda, who returned the kiss enthusiastically. They’d been a couple since late last year. I watched, with a strange feeling in my stomach, until Dora elbowed me and I realized that I’d been staring. I blushed and looked away, giving them as much privacy as I could in the small train compartment.

“Are you okay?” Sally whispered in my ear. “You look a little red.”

I nodded and held out my hand for Kaiya, who liquidly slid from Sally’s lap into mine. I stroked her fur softly and she kneaded biscuits on my leg. Her sharp claws made me glad that I had worn jeans under my robes.

Melinda and Cecilia broke apart and Cecilia went off to her meeting.

“I’m glad to see you two together,” Sally said to Melinda. “I wondered if you would ever notice that you were more than just friends.”

“I always knew it,” Melinda said. “I always wanted to be her girlfriend, but I didn’t want to press and lose her as a friend if she didn’t feel the same way. “ She laughed. “I should have known better.”

The rest of the trip to Hogwarts passed in a blur; the other girls talking and laughing as I was lost in my thoughts with Kaiya on my lap. I got warm and sleepy, and the passing scenery seemed to be an impressionist painting.

Sally whispered at me again while Dora was regaling Melinda with the story of a match at Quidditch Camp.

“You sure you’re okay?”

I nodded and whispered back. “Just a bit warm and I’ve felt a bit off since saying goodbye to Dad.”

“When did it start?” she asked. She always wanted to help with anything she could.

I thought back and tried to remember. It was when Cho had finished telling us goodbye and taken Dad’s hand. I told Sally, who laughed under her breath so she didn’t alert Dora or Melinda.

“It’s obvious isn’t it?” Her breath tickled my ear.

“Is it?” I whispered back.

“You’ve got a crush on your Dad’s girlfriend.”

I flinched back, felt myself blushing and put my head down. I looked back to all the times at the camp that I had been singled out for praise by Cho and how my cheeks would flame. I thought it was all from being embarrassed, but maybe it was more than that. I also looked back at how much I noticed when she was with Dad and felt even more embarrassed. Maybe Sally was right. No, she couldn’t be; yes, she was; my thoughts went round and round. Dora saw and also asked me if I was okay.

“Just warm,” I said. I knew she’d know that I was lying, but she’d also know that I’d tell her what was going on later.

The rest of the trip went by in a blur of forgotten conversation and we soon departed into the thestral-drawn carriages (although only Melinda could see them; she’d been present when her grandmother had passed away). On the walk to the beginning of term feast, Dora asked me what was up and I told her that I tell her later when we had some privacy.

“It’s not your period, is it?” She whispered. We both knew it had to be coming shortly, but it hadn’t started for either of us yet. I shook my head, and she let it go, knowing that pushing me was useless. I wasn’t even sure what was going on and I wanted to work it out for myself first.

At the feast, I barely noticed the Sorting of the first years and cheered only half-heartedly for them, mostly out of politeness. I picked at my food and not even my favourite mint ice cream interested me. When we were released I made my way to the Hufflepuff Common room as fast as I could and was already in my pajamas when Sally and our other dorm-mate Lorena came in.

Sally noticed I was already under the covers and after she’d changed into her bed clothes she sat on my bed.

“Whenever you’re ready to talk, I’ll be here,” she said and laid down next to me. She hugged me briefly through the blankets and I hunched up. I could feel her stiffen and knew I’d hurt her feelings, so I sat up and hugged her back as she was starting to get up from my bed.

“Thanks, Sally,” I said. “I’ll let you know when I’m ready.”

“Everything okay?” Lorena asked.

“Yes,” Sally and I said together.

Sally went back to her bed and I pulled the curtains around my bed shut. I could see a glimmer of light in the crack of the curtains and I knew that Lorena was reading before she went to sleep, just like she always did. I liked her, but she just wasn’t a close friend of me or Sally.

When I woke up in the morning, I was unsettled after strange dreams of Cho coming up to me in our kitchen with her lips stained the red, red, red of a dark wine. She touched the back of my neck as she passed by me and my skin tingled under her touch. I woke up out of sorts.

I changed quietly into my workout clothes and did my morning stretches. I felt a bit better afterward as this helped clear my mind of the strange dream. Then I went to the common room to do my more vigorous calisthenics and workout. Cho had given us an age-appropriate exercise routine and wanted us to stick to it so we didn’t ‘overstress our growing bodies.’ At the thought of her I lost count on my situps and started over.

Cecilia came down in her workout clothes and started going through her paces next to me.

“When did you know?” I asked her suddenly.

“What?” she asked.

“When did you know that you liked girls and not boys?” I felt my face redden again.

“Well, I do like boys, too. I like both.” She smiled and her face went pensive.

“Oh, I’m sorry; I didn’t know.” My blush deepened.

“It’s okay,” she said. “I’ve known that I was bi for a couple of years.” She stopped and sat next to me.

“You hear some people say that they’ve always known they were gay or bi, but that’s not how it was for me. When I was first starting to notice boys, it was always and only boys, but then a couple of years ago, it changed and I started to notice that I felt the same about girls.”

She paused and thought and I could tell she was thinking about how to phrase something.

“It was two years ago and I noticed that Auror guard, what’s-her-name at the entrance; you know, the tall blonde one?”

“Ballantine?” I asked.

She snapped her fingers. “That’s her. I saw her and it just seemed to click for me. I’d noticed women before and thought some of them were pretty, obviously, but it was different for her. I felt something here.” She pointed at her chest just below her breasts. “It was electric or maybe it was more like my stomach was doing flip-flops or something. Then I looked back at all the other women that I’d thought were attractive and some of them triggered the same thing. Last year, on a Hogsmeade trip, the same thing happened when Melinda and I held hands. By the time we got back to Hogwarts, I think we both knew.”

She looked at me. “That must have seemed like babbling. Did it help?”

I nodded. “I think I might be gay,” I said quietly and lowered my flaming face.

She put her hand under my chin and lifted my head. Meeting my eyes, she said, “If you are, it’s nothing to be ashamed of. You are who you are and you should love who you love. What brought it up?”

“I...it’s how I am around my dad’s girlfriend. She’s one of my coaches from Quidditch camp and whenever she talks to me or I see her with my dad, I get that feeling, you know the one you were talking about…” I trailed off.

“Just having a crush on your dad’s girlfriend doesn’t mean you’re gay. A lot of people have crushes on people of the same sex.” She put her arm around me as we talked.

“Have you noticed other girls or boys the same way?” 

I shook my head, thought a moment, nodded, then shook my head again. Tears started to run down my cheeks.

“I don’t...I don’t know,” I sobbed. She held me and stroked my hair.

“Look, you’re only twelve,” she said and I interrupted her.

“Almost thirteen, I’ll be thirteen in just over a month.”

She smiled. “All right, almost thirteen. You have plenty of time to figure it out. My advice is, don’t worry about it. You’ll find a girlfriend or a boyfriend when the time’s right. Or neither if that’s what you want.”

She laughed. “Or both, if that’s how you roll.”

I snorted through my waning tears.

We talked for another half hour and she made me feel better, but I was still no closer to knowing. I think there was a part of me that wanted to  _ know,  _ to be in control of everything and it was frightening to not be sure of something that felt so important. I wiped the remainder of the tears, hugged Cecilia again and went back up to my dorm. I woke up Lorena and Sally, then went off to shower while they stretched and yawned. We all went down to breakfast together and got our class schedules. About halfway through, Dora came over and asked how I was.

“I’m not sure. I think I may be gay, but I’m not really sure of anything,” I whispered to her, loud enough for Sally to hear too, but no one else.

“Well, yeah, okay,” Dora said, obviously trying to think of what to say.

Sally turned her head to talk to Lorena and I knew it was to give Dora and I some semblance of privacy.

“Okay,” Pandora said again, “that would be good, less competition for me.” She smiled, punched me in the shoulder, then hugged me. “Seriously, though, whatever you need, I’ll be here.” She went back to the Ravenclaw table and soon after it was time to go to our first class.

Sally and I talked on the way to charms, our heads close. She understood me better than anyone except maybe Dora, and even then sometimes it felt close. I couldn’t believe I’d only known her for just over a year.

“Just be yourself and it’ll all be good.” We went into Flitwick’s class side-by-side. Charms was my favorite and best class and I was almost as excited for it as I was to try out for Quidditch.

Two weeks later, I stood on a drizzly pitch with the other prospects. I was the smallest person there, and Van Nguyen, a fourth year was the largest: taller and heavier even than the seventh year captain, Jacobsen. Van had also gone to Oliver Wood’s camp and he and I knew each other fairly well.

“This team will be chosen on merit alone,” Jacobsen said to us. “Being on the team last year is no guarantee you will be this year, and that includes me. If I feel that I’m not good enough to be on the team on my own skill, I will still captain the team, but someone else will start in my place.” I knew that was unlikely, since he was an excellent Chaser. I was hoping to take the number three Chaser spot, since Singh left last year.

Jacobsen continued, “I’m going to have you all mount your brooms and make three laps of the pitch to see how you fly first, then I’ll take some of you individually and some of you in groups to run through some drills. After the first run through, there will be cuts, and then we’ll drill more. This whole process will take about three to five hours, so make sure you stay hydrated.” He lifted a whistle from around his neck and blew it. “Mount up!”

Most of the potentials mounted and started flying, but Van and I both did a quick inspection of our brooms before mounting. I could hear Sally yelling from the stands, but couldn’t make out the words. Van and I finished our inspections at the same time and mounted. He sped forward and then I caught up to him, my Comet 360 outsripping his older model. He grinned at me and pushed his broom harder. I put my head down and left him trailing long behind. After one circuit I began to pass the stragglers and poor flyers. Soon I caught up with the middling flyers and left them in the dust. When I reached the end of the pitch on the second lap, I turned tightly around the outer hoop and hugged the rings as I turned as hard as I could. I passed all but the best flyers by the middle of the third lap and landed gently near where we started. I inspected my broom again.

In less than a minute, the rest of the flyers landed and Jacobsen made some notes on a clipboard. He separated us into four groups of six or seven each and put us through some drills. He had us turn quickly, go from one end of the pitch to the other while timing us. He had us catch and pass the Quaffle to each other, first on the ground, then in the air. Finally, he had each of us take three scoring runs at the rings. I took one at each of the rings, centering the Quaffle through each of them as I scored. 

Each of us then took a turn with a Beater’s bat. I didn’t do nearly as well hitting the Bludger; I just didn’t have the upper-body strength and quickly tired holding the heavy bat. Van shone and he not only could hit the Bludger hard, but also could aim it fairly well. He hit the Bludger through the left goal hoop and when it returned to him, he flicked the bat at it and it whooshed through the right one.

“Lovegood-Potter, Perkins, Prince, Shafiq. You’re all with me. We’re going to do some formations and scoring runs, then we’re going to do some passing defence,” Jacobsen said. “Mount up!”

We ran through five basic offensive formations, all of which I knew from camp. Jacobsen himself was the lead Chaser and obviously the most experienced as he flipped through the formations with the skill of someone who had practised them endlessly. Prince was a returning Chaser and a shoo-in for the second spot. I guessed that it was between me and Shafiq for the third Chaser spot, as Perkins was a decent flyer, but didn’t seem to know the formations or attack patterns.

I thought I had the edge on Shafiq in skill and knowledge, but he was a fourth year and I wasn’t sure if Jacobsen would value that more regardless of what he had said before.

Then we started the defensive drills and I know for sure that I out-shone Shafiq here. I could read the passing lanes that Jacobsen and Prince were using and easily intercepted the Quaffle twice and ran a scoring run to the other end before they could catch me.

Jacobsen had us go the stands while he ran the Beater potentials through their tryouts. Van stood head and shoulders (literally and figuratively) above the others. He was easily going to make the team along with a slim girl named Frank who hit the Bludger with surprising force and accuracy for someone so slight. I felt a tap on my shoulder, turned and Dora and Sally both hugged me.

“You flew great!” Dora said. “Unless he’s fucking blind, you’ll make the team.”

“Thanks for coming out to watch,” I said to both of them. They nodded, let go and went to sit further up the stands.

Finally, he had the Beater candidates sit next to us and pulled out the Keepers. Van went back out and tried for Keeper, too. He did fine, but he didn’t have the natural instincts that a good Keeper had to have. None of the Keepers were especially good and I saw Jacobsen frown a little. Shafiq was the best, but he was barely adequate. I saw Jacobsen whispering to Prince and Prince nodding. I was imagining that they were saying that Shafiq looked the best of a poor lot.

After running the Keepers through their paces, he had the Seeker candidates come back to the pitch to try out. I tried out for this too as a backup in case I didn’t get chosen as a Chaser. We did vision drills where we tried to spot what someone was holding a full pitch away. Shafiq and I did the best at this, and a weedy third-year boy named Sayre did okay. Then Jacobsen released a Snitch and we all tried to find it. I had no idea where it went, but started a standard Seeker search pattern of spirals. Van followed me. Sayre did a cross-hatch search, unorthodox, but effective as he spotted the Snitch first and narrowly beat me to it.

Jacobsen had us all go sit on the stands again. The thirty or so of us who had shown up had been whittled down to fifteen.

“Alright,” Jacobsen said, “this is the team.”

“Chasers: Myself, Prince, Lovegood-Potter. Beaters: Nguyen, Frank. Keeper: Shafiq. Seeker: Sayre. Perkins, you are the reserve Chaser. Smith, you are the reserve Beater and Keeper. Dauphin and Dawkins, you are on the bench to fill in as needed and to get experience for next year. Everyone else, thank you for trying out and we look forward to your support at the first match. Team meeting on the pitch.”

Even over the ringing in my ears, I could hear Dora shout, “Fuck yeah!”

We all flew up and played a mock game five to a side with just a single Bludger. I was working with Prince as the two Chasers for my team and we were scoring easily on Smith, who seemed nervous. I was making a flat-out run to try scoring on him again when I took a glancing blow from the Bludger on my chest. I wobbled a moment on my broom, then tucked myself down as small as I could on my broom as the Bludger whistled above my head on its return circuit. Smith flinched to his right and I went to my right to score.

“Eyes open all the time, Lovegood-Potter!” Jacobsen yelled, “Even when on a good scoring run like that!”

He blew the whistle, collected the balls and we all landed for a quick meeting.

“We’re a very young team, but we have the best potential I’ve seen here in seven years. I think we’ll be in contention for the title this year. The biggest advice I have for you all is not to get down when you make a mistake. Learn from it and do better next time. Don’t fall for the same trick twice. Keep a positive attitude. Practice will be every Saturday at 1:00 for two hours and Wednesdays at 3:00 for one hour.”

We all shook hands. Van gave me a big bear-hug and spun me around. He kissed me loudly on the cheek and laughed as he spun me. I pushed him back and laughed with him.

The next day, when I woke up, I was sore. My breast hurt where the Bludger had hit me. I checked myself in the mirror, but didn’t see a bruise. I also felt slightly sick to my stomach.

“You okay?” Sally asked, noticing me checking myself out. “It didn’t look like the Bludger got you that hard.”

“I didn’t think it did, but I’m a bit sore.” I decided that I wasn’t going to wear my bra that day; I barely needed it anyway and no one would notice under my robes. All day in class, my shirt rubbing against me under my robes irritated me. Potions was the last class of the day and I couldn’t concentrate on my recipe. Sally noticed and corrected my mistakes before they went too far.

Then I felt it. A trickle on the inside of my leg. I raised my hand and asked Professor Deffleby if I could speak with her privately. She nodded and I went to her desk.

“I need to be excused, please, professor,” I whispered to her.

“Is everything okay?” she asked.

“I think my period started and I didn’t want to announce it to everyone here.”

She nodded. “Miss Dahl, would you be so kind as to accompany Miss Lovegood-Potter to the Hospital Wing?” My shoulders slumped a bit in relief. Professor Deffleby was covering for me so it didn’t look odd that I was leaving on my own.

Sally quickly packed away her stuff and I put away mine.

“I will take care of your potions from here, ladies,” the Professor said. “They both look good enough for acceptable marks.”

“What is it?” Sally asked me in the hallway.

“I know why I was sore this morning. It wasn’t the Bludger; I’m starting my period.” Sally side-hugged me. She’d started late last year, even though she was not quite twelve. I stopped in the bathroom to confirm and clean myself up. I dug in my pack and got out the magical pad that Mum had given to me. When Sally and I went to the Hospital Wing, I explained to Madam Pomfrey what was up. She offered me a pad, and gave me a lecture on how to use it, but I told her I already had one and that I had learned how to use it from Mum. She seemed satisfied that it was all okay and let me go.

On the way to dinner, I waited for Dora outside the Great Hall and let her know that she’d probably start any day and she should carry her pad to be ready. I also told her I’d be there for her tryouts on Saturday. Friday, she came to me and let me know she’d started, too.

Saturday, she tried out. The Ravenclaw team was the current Quidditch Cup champs and they had five returning players including two Chasers, so Dora was going to have to push to get that third spot. She flew great, but the two returning Chasers were obviously more experienced. The other real candidate besides her for the remaining Chaser spot was a sixth-year who had been the reserve Chaser the year before and he flew with the other two like he’d been with them for years (which he had). They had a chemistry together that they just didn’t have with Dora.

She was a better natural flyer than the sixth-year, but in the end he was just better with the other two than Dora. I could see that she was likely to be reserved as Chaser, but she still had a shot at Seeker, even though the Seeker from last year was a returning seventh-year. In the end, I thought she out-performed him, but their captain chose his team and she was reserved as Chaser and Seeker.

“Total fucking bullshit,” she said later, in a closed classroom, as she sobbed into my shoulder. “I flew better than Johnson and he knew it, but you can’t have a second-year take a position from a seventh-year. Fucking politics more than skill.” I agreed, but this wasn’t generally the best tack to take with her.

“Think of what Cho would tell you,” I said. “You did your best, and that wasn’t enough. Not because of what you did, but because of someone else’s decision. Practice hard, get even better and show them they made a mistake. Make them see you’re better. You got reserved, so you get to practice with the team and work with the champs from last year.”

Then I hugged her. “And besides, you made the team as a second-year, even if it’s as a reserve. Not too many second-years actually make the team.”

She kept her head buried in my shoulder and cried herself out. Finally, she raised her head.

“Thanks, Lils,” she sniffled. “I’m going to show those fuckers that Pandora Lovegood-Potter should be a starter.” She stood, wiped her nose and eyes with a handkerchief and left.

  
  



	6. Interlude the First-Harry during 2nd Year

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Harry receives a letter from his contact in MI-5's profiling division.

I pulled the curtain from over the Death Eaters’ Children Killer corkboard, flipped it over the back and looked at all the evidence again. I did this often enough that I had all the photographs stuck in my head. I could sometimes see Theodore Yaxley in my sleep, begging me to find who did this to him. Even his father didn’t deserve to see his son slaughtered that way. I always felt like I could hear McNair Jr’s screams. The other faces just looked at me accusingly. It had been more than a year since the killer had struck and no contact. He’d sent us a taunting letter, then disappeared, and we wondered what happened to him.

I had made sure all the surveillance and protective details were current for the remaining children who weren’t at Hogwarts (only Tom Pyrites and John Rowle were being home-schooled, so we had to still protect them). I read through the letter the killer had sent, trying for the umpteenth time to drag something, anything out of it that would identify him. We were almost certain it was a him, but even that wasn’t sure. I sighed and covered the board again just as my office door opened.

Bagnold, the department secretary brought me a thick inter-office memo from MI-5’s profiling office. I thanked Bagnold and he left. I slit open the letter.

_ Dear Harry, _

_ In response to your request for a profile. Most serial killers are male, especially violent planning types, and from your description, you have a planner, who carefully selects his victims and then executes then in a very precise manner. This type of killer is often caught when chance conspires against them, or they insert themselves into the investigation, which he will likely do in some manner, be it from giving you a tip, or being present in some way during the investigation. He likely has law-enforcement training or wanted to have law-enforcement training, or perhaps military training. He is extremely intelligent, and probably has good social skills that provide him with opportunities for social engineering. _

_ Without more detail on the victims it’s hard for me to say more. If this is an active investigation for whatever branch you work for, then we at the profiling branch could help if you cut us in. If not I would look for the following: _

  * _A male in his early twenties to early forties._


  * Someone who suffered a loss or setback when he was a teen up to his mid-twenties


  * Someone who has or sought a law-enforcement or military career


  * Someone extremely intelligent


  * He will likely take a trophy of some sort from each murder. Carefully search for a common trophy taken from the victims


  * A socially adept person--not a misfit


  * Look over the people who give you tips, they could be your killer


  * Reading in between the lines in your letter, this could be someone you know, re-visit anyone who meets the profile and think about what they are like. Eliminating people is not as good as coming up with a suspect, but it is one less person who could be your killer.


  * I don’t believe you have an impulsive killer who is seeking excitement, but a methodical planner seeking revenge



_ Again, if you could provide more details, I could give you a better profile. _

_ Sincerely, _

_ Jack Morrison _

It wasn’t much more than I had figured before, but the tip that the killer was likely to try to give us a tip or otherwise be involved was something I hadn’t known before. I copied the letter and sent it to Ritter to get his thoughts, then I closed up and went for a drink. And another drink. And another. After that I sent a Patronus to Ron to come and Apparate me home. He knew I was like this from a case, but since he wasn’t an Auror any more, I couldn’t tell him what it was about.

“Look, mate,” he said, “I’ve only seen you like this when it was a bad one. Take care of yourself. If you need, Hermione or I can stay with you for a bit.”

I shook my head.

“Thanks, Ron. I just need to sleep it off.” I hugged him, and I could feel him tense before he hugged me back. After he left, I took another shot of Firewhiskey, then I took a hot shower and went to bed. I woke up the next morning with Cho in bed next to me, breathing rhythmically. I watched her sleep for a bit before I got up. I grabbed a Sober-Up potion to help with the mild hangover and then made breakfast. When she came down the hallway, rumpled from sleep, I thought how lucky I was to have found her again, and hoped she felt the same way.


	7. Pandora--Summer between Year 2 and Year 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Pandora and Lily play in the U-15 European championship. The girls receive advice from Cho. Pandora overhears a conversation between Harry and Cho.

We all stood by our brooms waiting for the signal from the referee to mount. I scanned the crowd for Dad, but couldn't make him out. Oliver had been right when he said there'd be a good turnout for the U-15 European Championship. It was a beautiful day for it, slightly overcast, but no rain. The French team looked solid, but we had beaten them in the qualifying round and we were going to do so again.

Lily elbowed me. "Pay attention, Dora." The French anthem had just finished and ours started. I knew that when it was done, the match would start, so I put on my game face. Lily grinned at me sideways. My heart started beating faster. The music stopped. The crowd cheered. A whistle blew.

"Up!" I shouted and my broom sprang to my hand. I mounted and the game began.

The French played as well as they could, but we out-classed them at the Beater and Chaser position, with Lily and I especially playing some of our best defence ever. She intercepted so many passes that I lost count and only found out later it was an unofficial record for a U-15 game. Van kept the opposing Chasers off balance and they stopped attacking into his sector. Our other Beater, Sikes, kept a steady diet of Bludgers after them, too.

Dora and I ran wild on the French defence, seemingly scoring at will. Our Keeper was doing okay, not her best, but enough to keep us solidly in the lead. Eventually, we had such a large lead that even if their Seeker caught the Snitch, we would still win. Two hours went by, then four, then six with no sign of the Snitch. We were all getting sore and had slowed down. We took a mandatory food and hydration break and went back to the game.

After another two hours, it started getting dark and the lights came on. Still no sign of the fucking Snitch. Now, I was starting to not care if we won or lost any more; I just wanted to go home, get some food, rub some ointment on my sore butt and go to bed. Around eleven that night, the French Captain raised his hand and their whole team landed and formally ceded the match to us. The referee recalled the Snitch, which came zooming from near ground level behind a goal post. Neither Seeker had searched ground level very carefully, obviously.

The crowd went ape-shit. I remember all the hugs and tears, and vaguely remember Van kissing me full on the lips. God, I was so fucking tired and sore. Dad came down to the pitch and hugged us, not caring about the sweat or dirt. Oliver and Cho had come from the bench to celebrate with us. Lily reddened again at Cho's touch and her praise. She had it bad; I don't know how Cho couldn't tell. Or maybe she could tell, but there was just nothing to be done about it. I sort of felt the same way about Professor Longbottom sometimes.

We showered and said goodbye to our teammates and Oliver, who said he'd see us all back next year for his camp. Lily and I found our way back to where Dad waited with Cho. They touched each other a lot as they spoke and there was a smile around Dad's face that hadn't been there since Mum had left. I liked Cho a lot and she was obviously good for Dad. I think he was good for her, too, based on how she'd been when we first met her.

"Dad, I'm so fu-, uh, tired, can we just skip the meal and go home?" I asked.

"You take them home and I'll bring take-out?" Cho asked.

Lily said, "Please. I could murder a burger and chips. Cheddar, onions, HP sauce, tomatoes, please."

"Fish and chips for me, please," I added. "Oh, and make sure to get some of the packets of malt vinegar; I don't think Dad remembered to buy any."

Dad shook his head. "Nope, I didn't." He hugged and kissed Cho.

"You know what I like," he told her. A boyish grin came to his mouth and mine quirked involuntarily.

"Yes, I do," she said. "I'll meet you there in a few." She kissed him again, a bit deeper this time, but not so much as to be weird in front of Lily and me. She walked quickly down the rampway to the exit and left. I saw Lily watching her.

"I'm so proud of you two," Dad said, and pulled us into a big hug. "You both played great, and not a complaint from either of you about how long the match was. I was afraid they'd call it for the night and you'd have to resume in the morning." (They did this only for the U-15 and juniors matches. Adults played until the match was done or one side retired.)

"Please, can we go home," Lily asked. "My butt and thighs are so sore."

"Mine too," I said.

Dad took us by the hand and we talked as we left the pitch. Then he Apparated us all home. I ran into the bathroom first and rubbed ointment on my sore thighs and butt and then handed it to Lily. It stank horribly, but made me feel better almost instantly. I knew I'd still be sore in the morning, but it wouldn't be nearly as bad as it could have been.

Lily had set out tracksuits for both of us on her bed, anticipating that I wouldn't want tight clothing. She always looked out for me that way. I had changed and was lounging on her bed when she came out of the bathroom, wrapped in a towel, with her clothes under her hand. As she was coming down the hallway, we heard Cho's voice from the kitchen.

"Food!" she shouted. Lily jumped like Cho was in the hallway and scrambled to her room. She slammed the door behind her and started to change.

"It's not like she could see you from the kitchen," I said.

"I know," Lily said. "I really do know, but it's weird for me."

"You'll get over it..." I said, then paused dramatically, "...eventually."

She threw her towel at my head and I dodged it. We both laughed as she finished changing.

Dad was bringing out plates, but Lily and I just tore open the bags and started eating right from the take-out boxes. My chips were slightly cold, so I just started shoveling them into my mouth. Lily was taking huge bites of her burger, causing it to ooze HP sauce down her hand. Dad put the plates away and we all sat at the table and just ate like we'd been starving forever. Even Cho, who usually ate fairly delicately, was wolfing down a panini. Dad had a burger that looked a lot like Lily's.

"Are we sure that Uncle Ron's not here?" Lily asked around a bite of her burger. It took a few seconds for what she meant to sink in, then Dad started to laugh around a bite and choke a bit. He eventually managed to swallow and then laughed more as he drank.

"You were both so good," Cho told us when we'd finished and were cleaning up the wrappers.

"I was so angry last year when I was reserved for the Ravenclaw team," I said, stuffing the rubbish in the bin. "But, I think being on the bench was good for me. I learned a lot by watching Ravenclaw play as a team and I think that I'm learning to be less selfish on the pitch. It didn't hurt that we crushed everyone else for the Quidditch cup." I stuck out my tongue at Lily who glowered at me.

"You need to keep that selfishness, at least some though," Cho said. "It's important for a Chaser to not just be a passer, but to have a scoring mindset. You both know what happened with the Cannons this year, when Eckersley just wanted to assist and pass and his goal scoring went down."

We nodded.

"It allowed the opposing teams to not think of him as a threat and they could double-team Simpson and Bletchley. But, you saw the game where he'd been yelled at by his coach and kinda snapped out of it. He went on a scoring run; just from changing his mindset back to scoring."

"Lily, you need to keep making sure you don't fall into that trap," she told my sister. "Remember that you are the lead Chaser and it's your primary job to score. Pandora and Justin are there also, but you're the primary point."

She turned to me. "You're right that this year you've been less selfish with the Quaffle and shared it more. You can see in your play that you're heading the right way."

She patted both of us on the shoulder and went to the living room to sit with Dad.

"Don't get used to that Quidditch Cup trophy at Hogwarts," Lily said to me as we walked to our rooms. "You lost your Seeker, your Captain, a Beater and a Chaser. You're going to be in the same place next year that we were this year."

"Yeah," I said, "we'll have to hope that some of the new players are up to the calibre of the ones we lost."

"Meanwhile, we only lost Jacobsen and we came second last year," she said.

"I look forward to actually playing against you this year," I told her.

"You won't when you're up there with me and I'm destroying your defence." She laughed.

"Same back at you, bitch," I said, laughing.

We hugged and went off to our bedrooms.

I got up in the middle of the night to go pee and put on some more ointment. As I was walking down the hallway to the bathroom, I could hear voices from Dad's bedroom. I froze and eavesdropped.

"You're comfortable with where we're at?" Dad's voice said.

"I am, and I hope you are too," Cho responded.

"So, you're not thinking this will be permanent?" Dad asked.

"Probably not. You know I'm looking at some jobs that would take me out of the country. China's just starting to play competitively and they'll need coaches and training staff. I speak Mandarin and my CV is as good as anybody's. Do you think you could survive another long-distance relationship? I know I don't think that would be for me."

Dad sighed. "No, I don't think I'd want that. But, I'm glad for what we have now."

"Muggles call it ‘friends with benefits,'" she said.

Dad laughed ruefully. "Luna once told me that a relationship doesn't have to be forever."

"Wise woman; I always liked her," Cho's voice came more hoarsely and I could hear them shifting in the bed. I made a lot of noise as I walked the rest of the way to the bathroom and the silence from Dad's room told me that they had heard. When I came back from the bathroom, his door was fully shut and I could tell he'd used Muffliato on his room.

I was so sore that I struggled to go back to sleep, but when I did, I slept dreamlessly through the night.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is unbetaed, so any mistakes are mine and mine alone.


	8. Cho--Year 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Cho receives a letter that changes her life. A visit from Luna and a strange creature.

Harry’s house was comfortable. I could see Luna’s touches still in the decor and style, but it had been long enough that it was more utilitarian now. The girls’ room were shut now while they were at Hogwarts, but I still noticed signs of their presence: some drawings framed in the hallway and photographs of them together and separately. Luna had painted a non-moving portrait of Harry with the girls on his lap when they were about 5 and the colors of it and the expressions on their faces always made me smile.

Luna was coming over to talk with Harry about the girls. When she arrived, I was going to leave and give them some privacy. I loved the girls, but I wasn’t their mother and Luna was. Harry was finishing his shower and I could hear him moving around upstairs. Suddenly, a loud banging came at the door. I saw bright feathers pass by the window and wondered how a phoenix had come to be flying around outside.

Harry came racing into the kitchen naked, wand at the ready. Working out with me had definitely helped him; his abs were much better defined now. I ogled him for just a second.

“Relax,” I told him. “I think it’s a just a phoenix.” Like seeinga phoenix was an everyday thing.

Harry grabbed a kitchen towel, enlarged it with his wand and wrapped it around his waist. He then raised his wand again at the ready and nodded at the door. I opened the door and a large bird flew in. It had a snake’s neck and a turtle’s back, and all of its other parts were made from various birds. It landed on the table and dropped a formal looking scroll tied with a ribbon and sealed with a bright blob of red wax.

“What is it?” Harry asked, meaning the bird-thing and not the letter.

“It’s a-” I started to say, but Luna’s voice came from the door.

“Fenghuang,” she said and I nodded. “I saw it when I was coming up the garden path.”

I bowed respectfully to the creature and it pushed the letter at me with a talon that could have belonged to a small dragon. I saw the scroll was addressed to me and lifted it.

“Would you like some food or water?” Luna asked it in pretty good Mandarin. I hadn’t known she spoke it, but I shouldn’t have been surprised.

The bird turned its head and regarded her with its alien eyes, blinked, then nodded in a very human gesture.

“What does it eat?” Harry asked.

“I’m not sure,” I said.

“Try some meat first, then offer it any vegetables that you may have if it doesn’t want that,” Luna suggested. “They’re omnivorous, but primarily carnivorous.”

Harry dug around in the fridge and pulled out a flank steak that we’d been saving to grill later. He opened it and put it down in front of the fenghuang, who devoured it ravenously in three bites. It then hopped/flew to the sink and turned the tap with its beak. It drank slowly directly from the spout. Luna, Harry and I were all mesmerized by the bright colors and majesty of the bird. Luna snapped out of it first.

“You should open that,” she said, pointing to the scroll.

I slit the wax seal, untied the ribbon and read it. It was written in a very bureaucratic, formal old style and it took me a moment to puzzle it out.

“I’m being offered the job of head trainer for Quidditch China,” I said, shaking. I’d expected that I would be offered a job, probably an assistant trainer or coach, but I never expected to be offered Head Trainer.

“That’s great!” Harry shouted and hugged me. His towel fell off.

“I’ve seen it all before,” Luna’s voice came breezily from behind me. “I’ll come back tomorrow, Harry, and we can talk then.”

She leaned around me, kissed Harry on the cheek; her eyes slid down his body and she smiled. “Just looking, not touching,” she said, laughing again. She turned to me and said, “he’s much more fit now, make sure to keep exercising with him,” and laughed. She bowed to the fenghuang who nodded its head back at her. It turned the tap off with its beak and followed her out the door, hopping onto her arm when she outstretched it.

Harry wrapped the towel around his waist again and sat next to me at the table. “When do you go?”

He knew I’d accept; I knew I’d accept. We’d talked about what would happen then. It was going to be the end of this. We had almost two years together, though, and it had been good. Pandora and Lily liked me and I liked them. I could see staying with Harry and the girls, but I knew it wasn’t my place; my place was my vocation. My job is what brought me from the darkness and what would keep saving me from the darkness.

“They want me there in three weeks, and they want to know if I’ll accept within three days,” I said reading further. “This is from the Minister for Sport himself,” I said awed.

“I knew your interview went better than you thought it did,” he said and kissed me on the neck. My hands shook as I wrapped them around his neck. I raised his head and kissed him deeply, then deeper still. I tried to drink him in, since I knew we didn’t have long. Oh, I was sure I’d see him again, and he’d still be my friend, but he’d never be my lover again after I left; somehow I was sure of it. I stood and pulled him with me, his towel and then my clothes being shed down the hallway to his bedroom where we made love with an urgency that we hadn’t felt since that first time, nearly two years ago.

When we were done, we talked for almost an hour about plans. I was worried that he might fall back to his loneliness when I left, but he said he wouldn’t and I believed him. He had told me of those first few years after Luna had left him for Rolf. Pandora had also talked to me about how Harry had been after Luna had left; she didn’t want to see me hurt him. The conversation drifted off into sleepiness and he went under.

I got up carefully, pulling the blanket over him as I left. I went to his office and wrote a letter to accept, first in English, then I translated it into formal Mandarin. When I had finished, the sun was nearly set. I tied the letter to Harry’s owl for delivery to the embassy in London. I told them I would report to the embassy in ten days to take a portkey to Beijing.

I dug around in Harry’s bachelor fridge and found some frozen chicken and haricots verts that weren’t too freezer burned. I made a quick, plain stir fry from them and some spices I’d found in the cupboard. I would have preferred rice with it, but Harry only had noodles, so I made do. Harry came down in just pyjama bottoms, wiping his eyes.

“Sorry,” he said, “I don’t usually nap in the middle of the day.” He yawned. “That smells terrific. How’d you find anything to eat in there?”

“It wasn’t easy,” I said. “This is barely edible, I think, but it’s something.”

I dished some up for each of us, and we ate in silence until Harry summoned a bottle of champagne from his wine rack with his wand. He popped the cork and we both drank straight from the bottle. Soon, the dishes were on the floor and we were on the table together. This time it was had a more animal feel to it that I liked and I knew Harry did, too. We both wanted our last times together to be memorable.

After we’d showered again, we talked.

“Do you think Lily and Pandora will be okay with this?” I asked.

“They’ll miss you, but they’ll be happy for you too,” he said.

“I’ll miss them, too,” I said. “I’ll make sure to write them before I head out of country.”

“They’d like that,” he said and smiled the boyish smile that still made me weak in the knee.


	9. Lily-Year 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lily receives a letter from Cho. Pandora tries out for the Ravenclaw team again. Lily and Pandora play against each other for the first time.

I was studying for my Herbology class at breakfast when an owl dropped a letter on the table next to me, almost in my oatmeal. I picked it up and looked at it curiously. It wasn’t Dad or Mum’s stationery. The return address was Cho’s place in Edinburgh. I slit it open and read.

> _ Dearest Lily, _
> 
> _ I wanted to write you before you heard it from your father. I have taken a job as the head trainer for China’s new Quidditch program and will be leaving in ten days. I wanted to let you and Pandora know as soon as I could. It was an honour teaching you and you’re both naturals and I look forward to seeing you both play professionally and with England. Keep practising and keep your scoring mindset up. Remember when you’re interviewed later, that I was the first to say you’d go pro (ha-ha). _
> 
> _ On a personal note, I will deeply miss both you and Pandora. You both reminded me of what a joy children are and how it could have been if Hugh and I had had any. You mentioned to me how your father had been after your mother left, and I talked with him about that (not telling him that you had told me, of course). He assures me that he will be fine and that he will not be lonely. He said he understood why I was taking the job. _
> 
> _ I would like very much to receive letters from back home. Be true to yourself and know that if you don’t feel comfortable talking to your dad or Luna about anything that you can always write to me.  _
> 
> _ Follow your heart wherever it leads, _
> 
> _ Cho  _

I read the letter once, in shock, then read it again. It’s words hadn’t changed and she was still leaving. Tears began to run down my face, and I couldn’t control them. Sally noticed and I shoved the letter at her. She read it over then handed it back to me. I leaned my head on her shoulder and sobbed. Van caught my eye and mouthed, “You okay?” at me.

I shook my head slightly on Sally’s shoulder and cried until the tears wouldn’t come anymore. Breakfast was almost done, but I knew I couldn’t go to class like this.

“Could you tell Professor Longbottom that I will be late, please?” I asked Sally.

“Of course,” she said, as she got up to go. I ran to the Ravenclaw table, where I saw that Dora had also received a letter. Hers was crumpled in a fist and her face was white.

“Do you think Daddy will go back to being like he was after Mum left?” Dora asked me.

I shook my head. “He seems to be a lot better now. I think Cho was good for him.”

“Probably all the sex,” Dora said.

“Dora!” I shouted, but then laughed. She was probably partially right, but I didn’t think that Dad and Cho’s relationship was just about sex. She made him smile and she was genuinely the sweetest person; I always thought she was a closet Hufflepuff.

“She knew,” I whispered to Dora.

“Knew what?” Dora asked.

“Knew how I felt about her...about the stupid crush I have...had on her.” My face flamed under the tear-streaks.

“Yeah, sometimes she reminds me of Mum; you can’t get much past either of them.”

Dora hugged me. “You going to be okay?”

I sniffled. “Yeah. I think I will, but I’m going to go put this in my trunk and clean myself up before Herbology.”

When I reached my dorm room, I cast a preservation charm on the letter, folded it neatly and put it at the bottom of my trunk.

I think I was finally over my crush. Or maybe I wasn’t; my emotions were a raw jumble.

When tryout time came, I knew I’d be a shoo-in for the Ravenclaw team and that Dora was likely to make hers since the Ravenclaw team had lost so many players. My tryout went great and I was impressed with our team. Prince was the new Captain and returning at Chaser, I was returning as Chaser, Perkins had vastly improved over the summer and was going to be our third. Nguyen and Frank were the best two Beaters at Hogwarts and our defense would be solid. Shafiq and Sayre were back as Keeper and Seeker. Shafiq would be fine and Sayre was going to be okay; definitely better than last year. I had high hopes for the Cup this year as we’d have the most returning experience.

Dora’s tryout went really well and I was right that she’d definitely make her team. They’d lost two of their Seekers, their Keeper, one of their Beaters and one of their Chasers. Their lack of experience was going to make them shaky. Finally the Ravenclaw tryouts were over and their captain called her name.

“Way to go Dora!” I yelled from the stands. A middle finger shot up from her very imperceptibly to anyone but me and I laughed.

“What’s so funny?” Sally asked.

“She heard me and flipped me off.” I kept laughing. I gave Dora a big thumbs-up and I got up to leave so the Ravenclaw team could go through their paces without an observer from a competitor. As I was leaving, I could hear their captain shouting to them, stridently. It sounded like they weren’t great at taking orders yet. Strange to think of myself as a veteran when it was only my second year, but I already had a U-15 European championship under my belt and a whole year of practice and play.

“When do we play Ravenclaw?” Sally asked me, knowing that I already had the date circled, highlighted in red, and marked with a gold star.

“November 25th,” I said simply.

“That’s not so far off,” Sally said.

“They won’t be prepared for us, since it’s the first game for each of us. We’ll both get to see the Gryffindor-Slytherin game first, though and scout them out.”

November 25th came more quickly than I thought possible. It was a bright, crisp fall day with a high sun that was going to be glare soon. Madame Hooch called us all to our brooms and I met Dora’s eyes as she mounted opposite me. Even 10 meters away, I could see the nerves in her eyes and the way her broom shook slightly in her hands.

The whistle blew.

I reached the Quaffle first and immediately took a run at their number three Chaser with Dora hot on my tail. Ravenclaw must have had a plan to double-team me, but Van and Frank broke up their defense with well-hit Bludgers. I scored easily on their Keeper and when he made the pass back into play almost stole the Quaffle. Their second Chaser and Dora made a spirited run, but they just couldn’t penetrate our defense, especially with the way Van and Frank kept them off-balance.

Eventually, they made an errant pass and Perkins snatched it out of mid-air. He rushed with Prince and me in support and almost scored, the Keeper did a poor job on the rebound. Perkins pounced on it, and flicked it past the confused Keeper.

The rest of the game went in much the same manner. Their offense just wasn’t up to the calibre of our defense and Perkins and I intercepted so many passes that eventually their Chasers just tried to carry the Quaffle. Their Beaters never stood a chance against ours. I could see Dora was getting really frustrated and she started yelling over their captain. During a break to retrieve the Quaffle from the stands, he flew over to talk to her. From the shaking of his head and waggling of his fingers, it wasn’t a nice talk. Afterward, she flew with more determination and precision and managed to score a few goals, but by then it was a foregone conclusion.

Finally, Shafiq managed to find the Snitch and the game was done. It was a slaughter, Hufflepuff 460 and Ravenclaw 80. We were 200 points up for the Quidditch Cup already over Slytherin, who had won their first game 260 to 200. We shook hands all around and Dora managed a tight-lipped hug.

“After dinner?” she asked.

“Sure,” I whispered and then shook hands with the rest of her team.

The celebration in the Hufflepuff Common Room was loud and I left for a few minutes to go to my bedroom and snuggle Kaiya. Sally saw and followed me.

We both sat on my bed and let Kaiya go between us, seeking pets.

“Was it hard playing against your sister?” Sally asked.

“Not as much as I thought it would be,” I said, rubbing Kaiya’s chin. “Once that whistle blows, I’m in competitive mode and so is Dora.”

“Ravenclaw looked bad.”

“They have four first-time players, so it’s to be expected. They’ll be a force next year and the year after when all of them have more experience. We’re lucky that we’re going to have me, Perkins, Nguyen and Frank for three more years until Frank and Nguyen leave school. We’ll be in it every year.” 

Sally chuckled. “Think a lot of yourself, do you?” she asked half-joking.

I took the question seriously. “Yes, yes I do. I’m probably the second-best Chaser after Prince in the whole school and in two years, I think I’ll be better than he is now. I’ve got an innate knack for defence and I’m learning more and more how to fly better and score more.” 

I met her eyes. “I will be a professional player when I leave school or I’ll be dead.” I thought of Cho’s letter at the bottom of my trunk.

She could tell I was serious, but passed it off. “Drama or for real?”

“For real.” I waggled my fingers. “And, maybe, just maybe, a bit of drama.”

“Don’t you care about your classes?” she asked. I think she already knew the answer.

“Charms, Defence against the Dark Arts, Transfiguration are all I care about. I’ll never use Divination. I’m okay in Herbology. As long as I get an A in Potions, I’m fine with that.”

“What about Care of Magical Creatures?” she asked.

“I’ll probably get my NEWT in that, because I love animals, but I’m not going to be my Mum or Rolf, that’s for sure.”

“You’ve already got this all planned out.” She shook her head. “It’s not healthy. You’re only fourteen; give yourself some time to have fun. Get a girlfriend.”

“I’ll have a girlfriend when it’s time,” I told her, “after.”

Lorena stuck her head into the dorm. “Lily, they’re calling for you in the Common Room.”

Sally and I stood up and went back to down to enjoy the party until dinner time.

Dora came over to the Hufflepuff table and sat next to me during dinner. We ate quietly, with me giving her some subtle side-long glances. Her eyes were puffy and I knew she’d been crying. I understood why she was upset; it was her first game at Hogwarts as a starter and they got destroyed. It was a bad feeling and one I’d experienced last year against her own team. We’d come second in the Cup, but Ravenclaw just blitzed us in the game against them. I cried that night sitting alone in the Common Room until Van came down and let cry on his shoulders.

When dinner was done, she and I walked out together. Sally looked at me and I shook my head no, that she shouldn’t come with.

“Believe me, I understand how you feel,” I told Dora. “This was what I felt when your team destroyed us last year.”

She sniffled. She must have just been keeping it together. I hugged her and she sobbed. I held her while she cried and waited for her to be done. I stroked her back and head. “It’s okay, Dora, let it out.”

Finally, she pulled back and we sat on a stone bench.

“We were so bad,” she said shakily. “So bad.”

“Your team’s young, you’ll get better. Your Chasers have promise and I think your primary Beater actually has a lot of talent.” I grasped her hand.

“And, your Number One Chaser is really good.” She knew I meant her. She smiled wanly.

“I wasn’t that good either,” she said.

“You played much better after your chewing out.” She yanked her hand back, looked abashed, then took my hand again.

“He told me that if I yelled over him one more time, that I’d be off the team and that I should just concentrate on scoring and not on trying to play both offense and defence.” She looked at me seriously. “How are you so much better than I am?”

“I practice more. I practice at least one hour every day and also three hours a week with the team. I make sure to keep up with the workouts that Cho gave us to make sure I’m fit.”

“How do you find time to do that and keep up on your studies?” But, she knew the answer already. We’d talked about it over the summer in our bedrooms.

“I don’t.” I laughed. “Sally and I were talking about this earlier. I’m going to be happy with 5-6 OWLS and probably just three or four NEWTS in Defence, Charms and Magical Creatures, and maybe Transfiguration. It’s a sacrifice I have to make somewhere, and I know what I want to do. I want to play professional Quidditch. What do you want to do?”

She dropped my hands and stood suddenly. “Fuck! I don’t know!”

Heads turned to us at her shouting. She sat back down heavily.

“I’m only fourteen! Do I have to choose a career now? I want to learn so much. I want to know how to make a Draught of Living Death, I want to be able to summon a Patronus, I want to be able to Charm my own Quidditch broom. I want to be able to do it all.”

“Then you’ll be really good at all of it,” I said.

“But?” she added, she could hear the ‘but’ coming.

“But,” I said, “you’ll likely not be an expert at any of them. If you want to play professional Quidditch, and I know you do, you’ll have to decide what to let go. There’ll be time to learn in the off-season, too, like Hamilton and her finance stuff she’s doing during the Harpies down-time.”

“Can I start working out with you in the mornings again?” she asked after a while of silence.

“If you don’t mind working out with Cecilia, too. Meet me at the door of the Hufflepuff Common room at 6:30 and I’ll let you in, okay?”

She nodded, hugged me, stood and walked off. I watched her for a bit, then my tears flowed too. It was hard to see her in pain, but I’m glad I held it until she left. Sally came in later and sat by me until I was ready to go back.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you to Rumpelstiltskin for help with Cho's letter to Lily.


	10. Interlude the Second--Gabrielle Year 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Undercover Sûreté Magicale agent Gabrielle Delacour attempts to get Lucius Malfoy to sell her a dark artifact, but instead fights for her life alongside him against the DEC killer.

Lucius leaned across the table and put his hand over mine. _Merde_ , I had to turn the charm down a bit; I wanted him relaxed and trusting, but I wasn’t trying to seduce him.

I concentrated a bit and pushed the veela part of me back a bit; practice had definitely made it easier to control. He pulled his hand back and frowned. I had to gloss this over, quickly.

“You came here for a reason, Monsieur Malfoy,” I said with a cold edge to my voice. “I am not here to be flirted with, and it won’t get you a better price.”

It was the right tack to take. His face blotched, with embarrassment or anger, or maybe both. He hadn’t realized that he’d taken my hand and now was trying to cover up what he thought was an involuntary reaction.

“Sorry,” he said, the word seeming to be forced out of him.

“Did you bring the item?” I asked. I tried to seem eager, but not too eager.

He shook his head. “I couldn’t be caught with it. It’s at home.”

“Why then, did you come?” The edge in my voice was real this time. It had taken a lot of undercover work to set this up. I couldn’t use too much magic for it, since Lucius was known to use detectors to see if someone was in disguise with Polyjuice potion or Transfigurations. I used mostly Muggle means, like makeup, hair dye and prosthetics. I was tired of playing this persona of Mademoiselle Parvenue and tired of Lucius Malfoy; he was so boring with his pretentiousness and _hauteur._

He blinked. I think he thought he was still negotiating.

“If that’s how it’s going to be Mademoiselle, then perhaps we should continue another day.” He stood to leave.

“That is fine by me, Monsieur,” I said, internally sighing. At least another week of being Mlle Parvenue. If he would just sell me the damn artifact, I could arrest him, stop being in disguise and finally stop working undercover. I took a chance and turned the veela charm up just a notch.

He paused at the door, his hand hovering over the knob.

“No, it’s time to get rid of this thing.” He turned back to me. “It’s at my villa. Are you willing to Apparate with me there?”

I nodded, stood and collected my wand. I made a show of making sure my hair, outfit and makeup were perfect. I had played Mlle Parvenue as vain and I had to keep it up.

He side-along Apparated me to just outside the gates; I could tell something was wrong straight away, they were opened and I could sense that the wards were down. I had surveilled this mansion a few times and had probed the enchantments guarding it before.

“This isn’t right,” he said. He gripped his wand tightly.

A crashing sound and a muffled scream of pain came from up the cobbled path.

“Stay here!” he shouted as he ran toward the mansion.

I immediately ran behind him. He glared at me over his shoulder, but didn’t try to stop me.

The massive oaken double-doors were blown off their hinges, probably from a _Bombarda_ charm _._ We could hear spells being shouted from just inside. I blew past Lucius and entered first.

Draco was using the marble stairs as partial cover and dueling a short, slight man in a Death-Eater mask. Draco turned his head to look at me as I came in and the attacker hit him with a stunner. Draco slumped on the stairs.

I tried to petrify the masked man, but he flicked it away with a shield. Lucius came in behind me and we both began duelling with the man in earnest. The attacker was fast and well-trained. Every spell that Lucius and I sent at him was repelled, but it was costing him ground as he retreated. He ducked behind a doorway and Lucius pushed in front of me to rush him.

“No!” I shouted, but too late as the assailant’s wand poked out from behind the door and a stunner hit Lucius in the leg. He crumpled and his head hit the doorframe hard as he went down. I advanced more slowly. Spells were still shooting blindly out of the door. There was a pause and I heard him cast a Supersensory Charm. _Merde_ , now he could see me from another vantage point. With my left hand, I reached into my pocket and pulled a vial. I tossed it into the room he was hiding in. It broke when it hit the ground and acrid smoke began to fill his hiding space.

I heard Draco groan and stir. I ducked behind the stairs with him to wait for the attacker to come back out. The man emerged from hiding, a Bubble-Head charm enveloping his masked head. I grinned. The smoke would affect his bare skin also, and didn’t need to be breathed to be effective.

I think he knew it because he came out blasting. The balustrade in front of Draco and I exploded in a shower of marble shards. I reflexively protected my eyes from them, but still took some shrapnel on my arms and chest. Draco’s eyes blinked and I saw the light come back in them.

Draco aimed a wild spell around the newel and fire shot from his wand in a wide arc.

“Fuck!” the attacker yelled as the fire grazed him. He shot a spell at us and the balustrade exploded again, but this time I was ready and rolled away to the base of the stairs. I shot out a blast of fire of my own, but the attacker saw me at the last moment and ducked. My fire shot harmlessly over his head. Draco had popped up over the stairs, just in time for the attacker to shout.

_“Sectumsempra!”_

Draco fell down the stairs, bleeding from...everywhere. I blasted more fire at the attacker, but he waved it off with wind of his own. I could see his hands blistering now and I thought he was slowing down; the smoke was doing its job now.

I started to hex him again, but he flicked a foot and kicked a broken chunk of the stairway at me. It hit me in the right elbow and I barely held onto my wand. He took the opportunity to run out the open doorway.

I looked at Lucius and then Draco. If I left now, Draco would die. The fucker had escaped.

I knelt by Draco and began singing the _Vulnera Sanentur_ counter-curse to stop the bleeding.

When Draco was out of danger, I contacted my boss and went to revive Lucius.

He blinked.

“Draco?” he whispered as he sat up with my help.

“Lost a lot of blood, but should be okay, I think?” I said.

“Scorpius?” he asked. “Narcissa?”

I shook my head. “I don’t know.”

“You’re _Sûreté Magicale?”_

I nodded.

His face hardened. “Investigating my family again?”

“Be glad I was or you’d be dead now, along with Draco.” My voice was equally as hard.

Truffaut and Olefemi arrived. I knew who they were, but they wouldn’t know me since all my work was undercover.

“ _Maître Corbeau sur un arbre perché,”_ said, giving them the first part of the code.

Olufemi continued, “ _vous êtes Maître Renard?”_

I laughed. “That’s Mademoiselle Renardine to you.”

His wand pointed at my face. “Give me the rest of the code, now.”

Truffaut also held his wand at the ready.

_“Vous chantiez? j’en suis fort aise. Et bien! dansez maintenant.”_

They both lowered their wands.

“I have never seen you before,” Olufemi said, “but you know the codes.”

I filled him in on what happened and Truffaut went with Lucius to check on Narcissa and Scorpius.

Olufemi stayed with me as we made a quick investigation of the area destroyed by the duel. We were careful not to touch too much, as the local station chief would be sending a forensic team soon.

Truffaut came back with Narcissa and Scorpius. They both looked uninjured.

“Any idea who that was?” I asked Lucius.

“The DEC killer,” Narcissa whispered.

Lucius nodded grimly.

I blinked. The DEC killer, of course. He’d followed them here and had waited to strike when Lucius was gone. Only Lucius’s last minute decision to have me come back to the chateau had prevented a tragedy. I pulled a vial from my pocket and thought back to the fight. I carefully extracted the memory with my wand, put the silvery thread in the vial and sealed it.

The forensics team arrived soon after and then the station chief _._ I debriefed with him, and he was surprised when I wouldn’t tell him who I was and just directed him to ask the head of _Sûreté Magicale_.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is unbetaed. Any mistakes or errors are mine and mine alone. Sûreté Magicale would be equivalent of being an Auror in my headcanon. I know from the Fantastic Beasts movies that they use Auror as well, but it seems odd to me, so SM it is. The codes at the end of the chapter are from famous fables by Jean de la Fontaine, "Le corbeau and le renard (the crow and the fox)" and "La cigale et le fourmi (The grasshopper and the ant)."


	11. Harry--Just before Year 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Harry receives news that the DEC killer has struck again, this time in France. He will be working with a French Auror on the case. Harry has 'the talk' with Pandora and Lily.

Ritter’s fox Patronus appeared in my living room as I was finishing some paperwork.

“The DEC Killer has struck again. He tried to get Scorpius Malfoy while they were vacationing in France. Will be at your place in ten minutes with a  _ Sûreté Magicale _ agent. Please turn off your anti-Disillusionment ward.”

Ritter wanted to meet at my house instead of the office, so I knew it had to be serious. He’d only been to my house twice before. Once when Luna had left and I hadn’t come in for three days and once when the DEC Killer had taunted us by sending a letter to the press. 

I sighed and rubbed my eyes. Two years had passed since the killer had last struck and I’d hoped that he was gone for good. I should have known better. We’d talked about it a lot at the office. Sometimes it meant the killer had been arrested for something else or was just lying low to avoid heat. I’d hoped it was the former, but was pretty sure it was going to turn out to be the latter. I hated being right sometimes.

I put away the files I had been working on, started a pot of coffee and turned on the kettle. A few minutes later there was a knock on the door. I opened it and Ritter stood to the side to let whoever was Disillusioned walk in first. I caught a familiar whiff of perfume as the person went by, but couldn’t place it. Ritter came in and I closed the door.

“You can put the ward back now, Harry,” a female voice said from the living room, with a very slight French accent. I redid my wards, double-checking them before I walked in.

Gabrielle Delacour sat on my couch. I hadn’t seen her for a couple of years, since a Christmas at Shell Cottage with the extended Weasley family and the Delacours.

“You’re the  _ Sûreté Magicale  _ agent?” I asked.

Her face crinkled in laughter. “Surprised?”

“Yes. I had no idea you were an Auror. Have you been doing undercover work?” I asked, offering up the drinks.

“Ever since I left Beauxbatons,” she said. “Was that coffee I smelled as I came in?”

I nodded and went to get the coffee and tea. I put mugs, sugar, cream and some  _ stroopwafels  _ on a plate and took it all in. Gabrielle helped herself to a mug of coffee and Ritter poured himself a cup of tea. Gabrielle took a  _ stroopwafel  _ and put it on the edge of her mug to soften the caramel. I poured myself a coffee and did the same. I noticed that she took her coffee black, and Ritter had two sugars in his tea.

“Were you the one who uncovered the  _ artefacts diaboliques  _ smuggling ring?” I asked her, realizing that her cover as an importer of antique magical artifacts would have been perfect for infiltrating the ring.

She nodded. “It was perfect. I got ‘arrested’ at the same time as DuBellay and the rest of them, but then I ‘got off’ because of my family connections with nothing more than a minor political scandal for my father.” She laughed. “He was not pleased.”

“Does he not know you’re an agent?”

She shook her head. “Only my boss and now you and Monsieur Ritter.”

Ritter spoke for the first time. “I want her to work with you on this. She has access to information that we don’t since she was the one who stopped the attack on Scorpius Malfoy.”

“I just happened to be there,” she said. “I was undercover, disguised as an antiquities dealer. I’d been working trying to cultivate Lucius Malfoy and had a meeting with him at my office. He suggested that I come to his villa and look at a statue that he thought might be valuable. I knew something was wrong right away when his wards weren’t up correctly. We both heard screaming from inside the house and ran in. Draco was dueling a masked man. We all fought. The attacker was good. Lucius was a liability and went down quickly. I injured him, but he hit Draco with the severing curse and I had to choose whether to stop him or prevent Draco from bleeding out, so I saved Draco. He told me that he and Scorpius had gone into the panic room as soon as the wards went down, but he decided to see what was happening and ran into the killer.”

“Lucky for him and Scorpius that you were there.” Ritter sipped his tea.

“Yeah, but it was unfortunate that Lucius recognized from my spellwork that I had to be an Auror.” She grimaced. “I’d put a lot of work into trying to get him to incriminate himself, but I couldn’t let Draco die. He was really curious about who I was, but I kept my disguise.”

“What did you notice about the killer?” I asked.

She closed her eyes for a moment, gathered her thoughts, then spoke. “We know a few things we didn’t before. One, it’s definitely a man. He has brown hair, not too fair and not too dark. Two, he was shorter than average, about 170 centimeters and about weighed probably 70-75 kilos. Three, the mask he was wearing once belonged to Amycus Carrow.”

I interrupted. “How do you know that?” I realized the answer as soon as I asked it. “Lucius confirmed it?”

She nodded. “As did Draco.”

“Where was I? Four, the killer has Auror training. Five, his wand is blackthorn with a core of dragon heartstring.”

I interrupted again. “How…”

“We can detect wand residue from spells as long as it was recent,” she said, surprising me again.

“That’s new forensic magic,” I told her.

She nodded. “We’ve only been able to do it for a few months now. We’re going to share how to do it with your forensic Aurors and researchers.”

“It’s a shame that Ollivander passed away, or I’d just ask him who had a blackthorn wand with a dragon heartstring core.” I sipped my coffee.

“Did he not keep records?” Gabrielle asked.

I shook my head. “He kept it all in his head. He could tell you who bought what wand and when. He was an amazing person.”

“He was never the same, though, after being captured by the Death Eaters,” Ritter said.

“I can show you how to have your wand vibrate when it’s near the proper sort of wand,” Gabrielle said. She pulled out her wand and what I assumed was a blackthorn wand with a dragon heartstring core. She showed me the Charm and made sure I was doing the hand motions properly before I cast it. My wand hummed and I touched it to the blackthorn wand.

“Now, whenever you’re near a blackthorn wand with a dragon heartstring core, your wand will vibrate slightly.” She demonstrated with her wand, then I did the same. It shook just slightly enough for me to detect, but not so much as to be obvious.

“What’s the range?” I asked, as I stepped back into the kitchen to test it. It seemed to be about eight metres. Gabrielle confirmed it.

“How are we going to manage to work together without the killer knowing it?” I asked. “I mean, he saw you there and if he has Auror training, then he would recognize that you do, too.”

Gabrielle smiled. “No, remember, I was disguised, so he won’t know me.”

“I’ve already thought of this,” Ritter said. “You two are going to have a very public relationship, with lots of tabloid press. I’ll leak stuff to photographers that you’re together and it’ll be all over. That’ll give you a reason to be together so much.”

Gabrielle’s smile got bigger. “Think you can stand dating me, Harry?” She fluttered her eyes outrageously and I laughed. It’s something Luna would have done.

“You’re going to start ‘dating’ right after a Weasley family dinner. Try to hide it at first, but kind of don’t also, then I’ll leak it to the press and you can acknowledge it. Think you can both manage that?” Ritter asked.

Both Gabrielle and I nodded.

We sat down the rest of the night and compared notes. Finally, we had something solid to work from.

  
  


* * *

The girls came back from Luna and Rolf’s later that week and I knew it was time to do something I’d been putting off. After dinner that night, I washed the dishes with Pandora and then told her to wait at the table while I got Lily. Lily was in her bedroom with her Charms textbook for fourth year open and reading. She was idly twisting her hair around her wand.

“Lils, can you come into the kitchen, please? We all need to have a talk.”

She unwound her hair from her wand, put a bookmark in the book and sat up.

“Time for ‘the talk’?” she asked.

I blinked, surprised, then I laughed. She must have been able to tell by the tone of my voice or posture or something: just like Luna would have done. Both of them were so like Luna in some ways, but like me in others.

“Yes,” I said, “time for THE TALK.’” I made sure she could hear the all-caps in the last words.

She giggled nervously, but rose and followed me into the kitchen and sat across the table from me, next to Pandora.

“You know,” Pandora said, before I had a chance to say anything. “Mum already had the sex talk with us.”

“Yeah, I know. She and I discussed it and we decided that she’d be the better one to give you the hard facts, but I’m guessing you both already knew most of it anyway. It’s hard to be around all the animals that Luna and Rolf have and not know how sex works.”

Lily blushed a little, but Pandora met my eyes and nodded gravely.

“She also told us about contraceptive charms, condoms, STD’s and other methods of pregnancy and disease prevention,” Pandora told me matter-of-factly.

“Yes, I know. Like I said, she and I talked about this. I have a few things to add from a male point of view. First, did you have any questions about what your Mum said before I add my thoughts?”

They both shook their heads.

“Knowing about sex doesn’t mean you need to have sex. It’s okay to experiment and it’s perfectly normal to snog boys and think about doing more, but stopping and thinking about what you’re willing to do is good before you go there. Don’t let a boy pressure you into doing more than you’re ready for.”

“Daddy,” Lily said in a shaky voice. “I like girls, not boys.”

I smiled. Luna had told me that she thought Lily liked girls and we all saw how she had been around Cho, so I wasn’t surprised.

I stood and slid my chair between the girls, then sat down with my arm around Lily’s shoulder.

“Doesn’t make much difference, most of this applies to girls, too, except you can’t get pregnant.”

“You’re not angry?” She asked.

“Why would I be angry? There’s nothing wrong with liking who you like. Luna and I had that discussion long ago.”

_ “Harry, there’s something you should know before we go any further,” Luna said when I came up for air from our kiss. I removed my hand from inside her shirt and she sighed. _

_ “You’re not my first,” she said simply. _

_ “That’s okay,” I said. “That makes no difference to me. I don’t need to know about any boys before me.” I guess it was somewhat of a lie, since my brain was racing trying to figure out: Who? _

_ She shook her head. _

_ “No, it wasn’t a boy, it was Ginny.” Her eyes welled with tears. Both of us missed Ginny, she’d been like family to me and Luna’s first real friend. _

_ “It...we were all so scared when we were hiding in the Room of Requirement in Hogwarts from the Carrows. You have to understand there was a lot of sex going on. We all wanted someone to touch and hold, and one night Ginny just came over to my sleeping bag and we slept together. It happened a few other times and I also slept with Neville once. I hope it doesn’t make a difference to you?” _

_ “What sort of man would I be if it did? You wouldn’t deserve a man who cared about who you slept with before you slept with him.” I was relieved it was someone I respected; I honestly don’t know how I would have reacted if it had been Comac McClaggen or someone like him. _

_ “I…” I decided to tell her something I’d never told anyone before. “Hermione and I almost had sex once.” _

_ Her eyes went wide. I laughed because you couldn’t surprise Luna often. _

_ “You can’t tell anyone I told you, not even Ron or Hermione, okay?” I asked. _

_ She nodded. _

_ “It was about the same time; Ron and Hermione and I were off hunting stuff to weaken Voldemort.” We’d all decided to not ever mention Horcruxes again, but Luna had figured out we were doing something to get to Voldemort all that time we were gone. _

_ “Ron had left, angry, but it wasn’t his fault; the magic we were dealing with overwhelmed him mentally. Hermione was breaking down, so one night, I slid into bed with her to just hold her. I let her cry herself out, then she turned and kissed my cheek. Next thing I knew, we were kissing and her top was off. We both wanted to, to just feel something...human. But I think we both also knew there would be no going back and it would change things forever. It couldn’t just be casual between us. She pulled back first, and thank God she did, because I don’t think I would have.” _

_ “It would have been bad,” Luna whispered. “It probably would have ruined both our relationship and her relationship with Ron.” _

_ “Yeah, but my point is that while I’m surprised you slept with Ginny, it doesn’t change how I feel about you, or Neville either. You did what you felt in the moment and that’s okay with me.” _

“Dad?” Pandora asked, pulling me out of the memory.

“Look,” I said. “Boy or girl, or neither, or both. Who you love doesn’t matter. If someone tells you different, tell them to kindly ‘fuck off’.”

“Or not so kindly,” Pandora said. “Fuck off, wanker.”

Lily laughed again, this time through tears and her flaming red face.

“Boys will try to pull a lot of crap to get into your pants. Don’t let them manipulate you. I don’t worry about it too much, since you’re both strong girls, but it’s easy to get distracted in the heat of the moment.”

I lifted Lily’s chin and met her eyes. “I assume some girls might be the same, but I don’t know for sure. My advice is general; emotional blackmail for sex is not good.”

“I’m not telling you that you have to wait; although, I do think it’s good to not go too far before you’re of age, understand?”

They both nodded.

“Save below the waist stuff for when you’re sure. It’s okay to have a snog or a feel-up, and you’ll both want to, I’m sure.” (Now Pandora was blushing, too. I knew I had to be blunt for her.)

“Make sure your boyfriend or girlfriend is respectful of your boundaries, okay?”

They both nodded.

“Any questions or comments?”

“I…” Lily said, then paused.

“Judgment free right now; say anything, okay?”

“I’m going to start on a birth-control potion next year,” she said.

I blinked.

“Not because I plan on having sex,” she said quickly. “I have bad cramps around my period and it’ll help with that.”

“Me, too,” Pandora said.

“Okay,” I said. Luna had sometimes had cramps, too. “Do I need to sign anything for Madame Pomfrey?”

They shook their heads and I knew that Luna already had.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the long delay before the last chapter was posted. Thank you to merlins beard for looking over the part with 'the talk' for me.


	12. Lily--Year 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lily and Pandora head off for Year 4. They meet their cousin Violet Dursley. There is a fight on the Hogwarts Express.

Uncle Ron (Ron wasn’t really our uncle, but that’s what we called him) brought us to King’s Cross this year in a leased Range Rover, since Daddy was too busy to come. He didn’t say what it was, but Dora and I knew it had to be the DEC killer again, it had been two years since he’d struck and then he tried to kill Scorpius. Hermione couldn’t come either, she was also too busy. Word was that by the end of the year, she was probably going to become Minister for Magic, one of the youngest ever to hold the title.

Plus, both Dora and I were sure Dad was seeing someone on the down-low. He was coming in later than expected sometimes, I thought I could smell perfume on him. He’d tell us when he was ready.

Rose had been jabbering at Dora the whole ride in, and I could tell Dora was getting exasperated, but Rose couldn’t read Dora’s body language like I could. I think part of it was nerves. She was friends with Scorpius and while they’d written to each other after the attack, I knew she was looking forward to seeing him, and the chatter was probably her way of dealing. I decided to change the topic of conversation to Quidditch to rescue Dora.

“Going to try out this year, Rose?” I asked. She’d been in Madame Hooch’s extra classes last year and was a good flyer. Hermione and Ron wouldn’t let her go to Wood’s camp for some reason they couldn’t (or wouldn’t) explain, so I could only go by what little I saw her fly at school and at the Burrow when we were all there for family time, which was becoming more rare each year with Dad and Hermione so busy at the Ministry.

“Yeah, I’m going to try out for Chaser and Seeker.” She dug in the seat behind her and pulled out her broom, a used Cleansweep Model 2015XQ. She handed it to me and I looked it over. I would have liked to check it out more, but with the Trace on me, I didn’t want to risk testing the Charms on it. The bristles and handle were in excellent shape, but it was polished a bit much for me. I knew it was from Rose’s eagerness to show off.

“Nice broom,” I told her. “I hope you make the Gryffindor team, so I can destroy you like I did Dora last year.”

Pandora’s face darkened, then she smiled and laughed. “Don’t get used to it, we’re going to be much better this year.” She saw Rose’s face, who was trying to decide how serious I’d been when I told her I was going to destroy her.

“Lily’s mostly messing with you,” Dora told her. “But, she won’t take it easy on you because you're our cousin.”

“We’re not really cousins…” Rose started to say, but Dora waved her off.

“I know, I know, but you know what I mean.” Dora took the Cleansweep and looked it over, too. “It is a nice broom. From what I’ve seen, you should make the Gryffindor team. Two of your Chasers left and unless one of your fellow second-years is better than you, you’ll take the third spot and Pumpkinhead will take the second.”

“Pumpkinhead?” Rose asked, then you could see her face as she realized who Dora meant. “You mean Dawkins?”

Dora nodded. “That’s what I said, Pumpkinhead.”

“I mean, he does look a bit like a pumpkin,” I said. I leaned in and stage-whispered to Rose, “But, I think she insults him because she has a crush on him.”

Dora punched me in the arm and we all laughed. From the front passenger seat, Hugo looked up from his book, then went right back to reading. He was always like this. I couldn’t wait until next year when he was almost certainly going to be a Ravenclaw.

Dora leaned over the seat and put Rose’s broom back.

“We’ll be there in five minutes,” Ron called from the front seat. We all made sure our stuff was stowed away and got ready.

After we parked, Ron got out first and looked around carefully. As much as he clowned around, it was easy to forget he’d been an Auror until a time like this when he was hyper-aware. I was pretty sure he also had a Supersensory Charm going. His normal smile wasn’t there as he scanned the surroundings. He waved us out, we got our stuff on trolleys and made our way through the station. When we got to the other side of the platform where the Express was, Ron groaned.

“What the fuck is he doing here?” Ron muttered. Rose and Hugo both startled at his language. I smiled and Dora covered her mouth to hide her laughter. Ron raised his wand at the ready, but it had never really been fully lowered anyway. We all followed his gaze. He was looking at a fat man with a small brown-haired girl holding his hand. From her size and the fact that I didn’t recognize her, she was likely a first year.

Dora whispered in my ear. “That’s Daddy’s cousin, Dudley, and that has to be his daughter, Violet.”

“What?” I gasped, and tried to get a better look, but then I had to quicken my pace to keep up with Uncle Ron. I looked again as we walked and I could see it. I’d seen photos of Dudley when he was younger and knew he had a daughter, but they’d never been over. Dad said they weren’t on bad terms anymore, but they weren’t close either.

As Ron reached him, Dudley held out his hand. Ron looked at it like it was a spider and pointed his wand at Dudley.

“What are you doing here?” he demanded, more harshly than I was used to hearing him talk.

Dudley smiled and it filled his florid face. I warmed up to him then, I could tell he was someone who laughed a lot, and wondered how he’d changed from the little bit that Daddy had told us he was like.

“My daughter is starting this year.” He gently pulled the girl forward from where she was partially hiding behind him. “This is Violet, and she got her Hogwarts letter a few weeks ago when she turned eleven.”

He looked around. “Is Harry not coming? I was hoping his daughters would help out Violet and watch over her.”

I stepped forward, pushing Ron’s wand down as I went by. He lowered it reluctantly. “I’m Lily and this is Pandora.” Dora waved.

“I should have known, you both have a bit of his hair,” he said, stepping forward and extending his hand.

I shook Dudley’s hand and then Violet’s who shook mine very tentatively. “We’re your cousins Lily and Pandora.” I pointed at Rose and Hugo. “That’s Rose and Hugo Weasley. Rose is in second year and Hugo will be coming to Hogwarts next year.”

Hugo looked up from the pamphlet he’d been reading and snorted. “A floral convention.”

“What?” Violet squeaked.

Rose stepped forward and shook Violet’s hand too. “My brother thinks he’s funny. He means you’re Violet, I’m Rose, and she’s Lily; a floral convention.”

Violet’s mouth quirked up, I laughed, Dora smirked, Dudley let out a sharp, barking laugh, and even Ron smiled.

“Daddy’s busy with work right now, that’s why he couldn’t be here,” I told Dudley. I tapped him on the crook of his elbow and he knelt. I gave him a big hug, watching Ron’s eyes bug out from the corner of mine.

When we’d broken apart and he’d stood again, I told him. “I hope we’ll see more of you. You should come over and talk to Daddy. I’m sure you both have a lot you’d like to say to each other. And I know he’d like to meet your wife and Violet.”

“We’re separated,” he said, with his smile slipping some. “But, I’d love to catch up with Harry. I have a lot to apologize for.”

“Yes,” Ron said, “you do.”

“Uncle Ron, make sure to give our Uncle Dudley our Dad’s contact info, okay?” I asked.

Ron mumbled what I thought was a ‘fine.’

“Oi! Scorpius!” Rose yelled, waving at Scorpius Malfoy, who was walking by his dad and an Auror bodyguard. Draco looked pinched and wary and he had his wand out just like Ron did.

Ron groaned under his breath. “Not him, too.”

I could see Draco’s shoulders slump when he saw Ron, but he came over as Scorpius ran ahead of him slightly to greet Rose. 

Rose and Scorpius were talking fast to each other. I saw Melinda and Cecilia further on the platform and they waved at us. I waved back. Violet noticed and I told her that they were our friends and that we’d met on the Hogwarts Express our first year.

“Would you like to sit with us and Rose and Scorpius?” I asked her.

She nodded shyly.

Ron was introducing Draco to Dudley and the look on his face was hard to decipher. Dad said that Draco wasn’t the same as when they’d been in school together and that ‘he’d had his stuffing knocked out a bit.’ I could see it when I looked at Draco’s posture, I thought.

Mr Creevey came over and Ron shook his hand and introduced him to Dudley and Violet.

“Dennis, this is Harry’s cousin Dudley and his daughter, Violet. Dudley, this is Dennis Creevey; he went to school with Harry and me.”

“Would you like a picture of your daughter as she goes off to Hogwarts?” Mr Creevey asked Dudley.

“Yes, please!” he said enthusiastically.

Mr Creevey had Dudley and Violet take a picture in front of the train then got all of us together. Ron looked decidedly uncomfortable between Dudley and Draco at the back of the group.

“Just give me your contact info and I’ll mail you a print in about two weeks.” Mr Creevey typed Dudley’s address and number into a Muggle mobile phone, shook everyone’s hand again, then left to take some more photographs.

The whistle blew, telling us it was five minutes to departure. We hugged all around, said our goodbyes and made our way onto the train.

“We’re not going to be able to sit with Melinda, Cecilia, and Sally like normal,” Dora said, “since there’s five of us now.”

“Oh, don’t worry,” Rose said. “Scorpius and I are going to sit with some of our friends; if you don’t mind?”

Both Dora and I shook our heads.

“Besides, Cecilia will have to go with the Prefects, so it will be just Melinda and Sally,” I said.

“True, I forgot,” Dora said. “It should be comfortable with the five of us.” She turned to Violet. “You don’t mind riding with us; Lily’s best friend, Sally; and our seventh-year friend, Melinda?”

Violet shook her head.

“I already asked her,” I told Dora. She punched me for the second time that day.

We went our separate ways from Rose and Scorpius and found Sally, Melinda, and Cecilia in our normal compartment with another girl I recognized, Justine Eliot. Justine was a fourth year, like me and Dora, but she was in Gryffindor, so I only knew her from our Defence Against the Dark Arts classes and Potions. Her face was red from crying and Sally was sitting with her arm wrapped around her and talking softly.

“I’m sorry,” I said, and they both looked up. “Would you like us to find a different compartment?”

Justine sniffled, then shook her head. “No,” she said thickly, “you should ride with your friends. I’ll go.” She started to rise. I stepped in, put my hand on her arm, pushed her down lightly, and sat next to her.

“Nonsense, you’re welcome here,” I told her. Kaiya meowed from her carrier.

“Is that your Kneazle?” she hiccoughed.

“Yeah, this is Kaiya.”

Dora and Violet came in and closed the door. They stowed their luggage and Dora took care of mine while I opened Kaiya’s carrier. She shot out immediately and head-butted Justine, who began to cry silently, her shoulders rising and falling. Sally kept her arms around her and whispered to her as Kaiya purred in Justine’s lap. After a few minutes, a Slytherin Prefect whose name I couldn’t remember stuck his head in the door.

“Black, we’ve got to have our meeting and start our patrol,” he said to Cecilia.

Cecilia whispered one last thing to Justine who nodded and smiled thinly, then Cecilia gave Melinda a quick kiss and followed the other Prefect out into the corridor.

Justine kept petting Kaiya with her head down until she stopped crying.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “Thank you for letting me hold Kaiya.” Kaiya raised her head at her name and trilled a long low meow. “She helped.”

She seemed to notice Violet for the first time, who was talking softly with Melinda.

“Hi,” she said to Violet, “I’m Justine. I’m a Gryffindor in the same year as Lily and Pandora.”

“Violet, I’m Lily and Pandora’s cousin,” Violet said. Kaiya heard Violet talking, leapt from Justine’s lap to Violet’s and butted her hand until she petted Kaiya, too.

“Your Kneazle’s an attention-seeking monster,” Melinda laughed.

“Yeah, but she’s made me feel better,” Justine said. “I’d seen her around the castle with you and your sister,” she told me, “and I petted her a few times when she came up to me in the hallways, but she never stuck around much.”

“You can tell a lot about someone by how Kaiya reacts to them,” I said. “I knew Melinda was okay even though she’s a Slytherin on that first ride in when Kaiya went right to her.”

Melinda knew I was joking and smiled.

“It was just some boys teasing me, but I let it get to me,” Justine sniffled and I gave her a handkerchief from my robes. “I don’t want to mess it up,” she said, handing it back.

I took it and got out my wand. " _Geminio_ ," I said and copied it. I handed the copy back to her and pocketed my original.

“I’m a Seventh-Year and I can’t do the Doubling Charm very well, and this little snotling just whips it out tra-la-la,” Melinda said. I knew she was just teasing me to distract everyone so Justine could use the handkerchief without everyone staring and I appreciated Melinda even more in that moment.

Justine wiped her face and nose while I pretended to be insulted by Melinda and gave her some hell back. Poor Violet seemed confused, but Sally said something to her I couldn’t hear and Violet nodded.

“Do you mind if I tell them?” Sally asked. Justine shook her head.

“It was Wilkins and Noor!” Sally spat their names. “They saw her bracelet and started calling her names.”

Justine was wearing a rubber rainbow-hued bracelet and I understood.

“Wilkins and Noor are prats,” I said. They were Gryffindor Fifth-Years and they thought they were King Shits of the Castle, but really they were just a couple of ignorant dicks. I wondered why they were in Gryffindor sometimes, as they didn’t seem particularly brave.

“May I see your bracelet?” I asked Justine. She slipped it off and handed it to me.

“Watch closely, Caravel,” I teased Melinda, “this is how it’s done.” I copied the bracelet for me, Sally, Dora, Melinda, and an extra for Cecilia. I asked Violet if she knew what it meant and wanted one. She nodded.

I handed Justine back her original and put on my new bracelet. The other girls did, too.

“Right, I’m going to go find Van,” Dora said, rising.

I raised an eyebrow at her. She shook her head. I knew it meant she was going to do something I shouldn’t be involved in.

Dora opened the door and stepped into the noisy hallway. After she closed the door, we all started filling in Violet on what Hogwarts was like and what the houses were. She was so shy, but we got out of her that Dudley and her Mum were separated and she lived with him on the outskirts of Manchester in a council flat. He worked as some sort of auto mechanic, and when he was at work, her Gran looked after her. The trolley came around and we all bought too much candy and shared it with Violet.

I was just trying to trade Justine for her Harry Potter chocolate frog card, when the door opened and Cecilia pushed Dora in. Dora’s face was streaked with soot and her hair had been melted off at the ends. The smell of burnt hair followed her into the compartment.

“Sit! Lovegood-Potter!” Cecilia yelled at Dora, causing us all to jump. Cecilia rarely used her command voice.

“But, I--”

Cecilia whipped out her wand. “One more word and you’ll ride to Hogwarts _Silencio’d,_ got it?”

Dora gulped and nodded.

“When we get to Hogwarts, you are to go directly to Professor Flitwick’s office and wait for him. Do not go to the feast, do not go to the Great Hall. Do I make myself clear?” Cecilia poked Dora in the chest with her wand.

Dora nodded again.

“Fifty points from Ravenclaw,” Cecilia said as she closed the door to our objections. It opened a second later and her Prefect Badge was off.

“Also, bloody well-done, Lovegood-Potter,” she said, winking, then shut the door again.

“What happened?” I asked, getting out my handkerchief again and starting to wipe Dora’s face. She yanked it from me and did it herself.

“Van and I tracked down Wilkins and Noor. He was in a compartment with his… his sycophants. Wilkins saw the bracelet on my wrist when I came in and started to say something, but I hit him with a _Langlock_ and Van just grabbed Noor when he tried to get to his wand.”

She felt the singed end of her hair and sighed. “It’ll never grow back right.”

Melinda touched her wand to Dora’s hair and said some charms I didn’t know. Dora’s hair grew back and the singed ends fell to the floor.

“Thanks, Melinda,” Dora said. Melinda waved it off.

“Pumpkinhead and Silvanus tried to get Van off Noor, so I Petrified Pumpkinhead, but then Silvanus hit me with some sort of jet of fire that singed my hair and caught the curtains of the compartment on fire. He and I went back and forth while Van bashed Noor’s head into the bench. Next thing I knew the Prefects were there, the fire was out, I was Petrified along with everyone else and then being dragged back here by Cecilia. I think Van got taken away by Mendoza, and Pratt was taking care of the Gryffindors.”

“I…” Justine started to say. “You didn’t have to do that, but thank you.”

“No.” Dora said. “I really did have to do that. Those fucking dicks deserved that and more. I’m just sorry that it’s going to cost Gryffindor points, too.”

“And of course for how they treated you,” I added.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is unbetaed. Any errors are mine and mine alone. Also, poor Ron.


	13. Pandora--Year 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Pandora receives a talking-to from Professor Flitwick. Later, she goes on a date.

After getting off the train, I was frog-marched by Cecilia into one of the carriages. Lily had said she’d take care of my trunks, so I wasn’t worried there. I saw Mendoza shoving Van into a different carriage. I tried to wave at him, but Cecilia poked me with her wand.

“No communicating with the condemned, Lovegood-Potter,” she said. I could hear the seriousness in her voice, but also a small (very small) trace of humor.

“All right, all right,” I said. “I’ll go straight to Professor Flitwick’s office.”

I got into the carriage and it immediately started heading toward the castle. When it arrived, I went directly to his office, like I said I would. I saw Van down the hallway mouthing something at me that I couldn’t make out, then Wilkins, Noor and Silvanus all came into the hallway and went to Professor Longbottom’s office. They glared at Van and me, but I had no fucks left to give.

I sat in the chair opposite Professor Flitwick’s desk and waited. The hourglass on his desk emptied its top bulb once, then magically flipped over and started to flow again. It had almost emptied again when the sharp crack of a House-elf Apparating made me jump and scream.

“Sorry, miss,” a House-elf said. I relaxed. Lily had grown close to some of the House-elves and had introduced me to Daisy, calling her ‘another flower.’ We chatted sometimes while Daisy cleaned our dorm room. She sat down a plate with a ham and cheese sandwich, mash and a small biscuit. Next to it she put a glass of water that I knew would refill when it was emptied.

“I know miss would have liked a roast dinner instead, but Daisy was ordered not to bring it.” She looked around furtively then waved her hands. The food changed into a roast dinner complete with a Yorkshire Pudding covered in gravy.

“But Daisy was not ordered not to change it once Daisy brought it.” She bowed to me and Disapparated.

I tucked in and finished it quickly, so it wouldn’t be obvious to Professor Flitwick that I’d been given a dinner I wasn’t supposed to have.

The hourglass emptied and filled twice more and I started to nod off in the warm office. I was half-asleep when the door finally opened.

“No need to stand, Ms Lovegood-Potter,” Professor Flitwick said as he walked in and took his seat. He sniffed the air, he could obviously smell the roast dinner.

“I see that your friendship with the House-elves has paid off with a dinner you did not deserve.” He laughed. “They are our servants, but they have minds of their own. It’s of no matter.”

He looked me directly in the eye.

“You remind me more of your father than your mother.”

I started to say something, but he lifted his hand and I shut it.

“That is both a compliment and not a compliment. Your father was brave and would stand up for those who wouldn’t or couldn’t stand up for themselves, but he was also rash, impetuous, and prone to going off without thinking through the consequences.”

He sighed. “What were you thinking? Or, were you thinking at all?”

“I was thinking that I was going to hex Wilkins and Noor into lumps and then probably pants them and parade them up and down the corridor with their danglies hanging out.”

He blinked, then recovered and asked, “Tell me what happened in your own words.”

I started with what Justine had told us and how upset she was. I told him how I got Van and went to hunt down Wilkins and Noor. I described using Langlock on Wilkins while Van was grabbing Noor. I told him I petrified Pumpkinhead when he tried to retaliate.

“Do you mean Dawkins?” he asked icily.

I nodded.

“Then Silvanus shot some sort of fire at me that singed my hair and set the compartment’s curtains on fire,” I said. “Then the Prefects arrived. They put out the fire, Petrified us, and took us to separate compartments.”

“Are you sure it was Silvanus who shot fire at you?” he asked grimly.

“Yes, sir.” I hung my head and began to cry, more from the released stress than anything else, I thought.

“Wait here.” He left and the hourglass emptied and filled once more. It had nearly emptied again when he walked back in and shut the door. He sighed heavily as he sat down.

“Hand me your wand, Ms Lovegood-Potter.” He held his hand out.

I hesitated.

“Now!” he shouted. I gave it to him.

_ “Priori Incantatem,” _ he said, touching it with his wand. I watched fascinated as the previous charms and hexes I had cast that day shot out in a shadowy form. He kept his wand on it until it had gone through the altercation in reverse.

He sat my wand down on the desk in front of me and put his away. I took it back and put it away.

“This is a very serious matter. Brawling on the train is not unheard of, but the severity of this one demands harsh punishment. Do you agree?” He looked me directly in the eyes.

“Yes, sir,” I said, because disagreeing with him right now seemed very unwise.

“You are to have detention with the House-Elves cleaning in the mornings before class for one month. You will report to the kitchens at 5:00 a.m. every weekday to work with them until 6:45. Furthermore, you will not be permitted to visit Hogsmeade this year. I have already contacted your father about this, and he agrees. I expect you will be hearing from him shortly, as well.”

I began to object, but he cut me off with a raised hand and a stern look.

“Be glad; Professor Longbottom wanted to suspend you from Quidditch for the year, and had almost convinced Professor Deffleby of it when I suggested this instead. In addition to the fifty points that the Prefects rightly took from you, everyone involved in this altercation will start with a debit of 100 points, so until you earn back 100 points, you will earn no points for your house. Your detention starts tomorrow, by which I mean today, since it is after midnight.”

He sighed again.

“Go to bed, Ms Lovegood-Potter.”

I left and started the long walk to the Astronomy tower. No one was still up in the Common Room when I got there. I sat in front of the fireplace, grabbed a blanket from the pile next to the armchair, and wrapped myself up. When I’d cried myself out, I looked at the clock and I was only going to get about three hours of sleep before my punishment started.

I thought through it and decided that even though I deserved it, I would still have done it knowing the outcome. Maybe I was more like Dad than Mum, like Flitwick thought, but Mum would also have done the right thing, too, but maybe differently, so I wasn’t too sure. I went up to my dorm and set my alarm for 4:40 so I could get dressed before going down to the kitchens.

When the buzzing woke me, I didn’t understand at first, and it took a moment for me to remember. I swatted the clock to turn it off and dragged myself to the bathroom for a quick shower. When I got to the kitchens, I was greeted by a House-elf I recognized but couldn’t name.

“Miss will be assisting in bathroom cleaning with Frizzle this morning,” he said to me, pointing to a small male Elf with a cleaning kit.

I nodded and held out my hand to Frizzle. He looked at it like he wasn’t sure what to do with it, then he shook it.

“Pandora,” I croaked, my voice rusty from lack of sleep.

“Ready?” he asked.

I nodded. He tightened his grip, and we Disapparated. I knew that the Elves could Apparate inside Hogwarts, but was still surprised. We appeared in a cavernous bathroom with a large sunken tub and stalls off to the side.

“You know the  _ Scourgify  _ charm?” he asked.

I nodded and walked down the steps into the tub. When I got in, I changed my mind and decided that it was really a small pool. I began cleaning it. Even with the charm it was hard work and I couldn’t imagine doing it by hand. Frizzle went into the stalls and began cleaning them. Before I was even a quarter of the way done with the tub, he had already cleaned all the stalls and moved on to freshening the towels. I was sweating and sticky already and glad I’d dressed in light clothing. I heard a creak and saw that Frizzle had opened a hidden cabinet and was refilling various soaps and lotions in bottles that had tubes that ran to the taps in the tub.

I put my head down and started working faster. My arm was aching now from waving my wand. Songs started going through my head on repeat. I couldn’t imagine how this tub had gotten so dirty on the first night of term.

“How is Miss doing?” he asked, sticking his head over the edge.

“I’m about three-quarters of the way done.” I kept cleaning as he talked.

“The Prefects always leave this room filthy,” he said. “Miss has done a good job. Once you finish, you are excused as you will have only five or so minutes left.”

I nodded and kept cleaning. He Disapparated. I finished soon after, tried to guess the time, but failed. Then I saw there was a clock on the wall; it was ten to seven.

I thought about using the tub to bathe, but realized that I would be in more trouble if caught and also that I would have to put on my sticky clothes afterward.

I went out the door and just as I suspected, it was the Prefects’ bathroom on the fifth floor, so Ravenclaw tower wasn’t too far. I quickly made my way up to the common room, rushed through it to my dorm to get clothes and showered. I made it down to breakfast in the Great Hall just as Headmistress McGonagall stood. I grabbed a scone and some jam.

The Hall went silent.

“As I’m sure all of you know by now, there was an altercation on the Hogwarts Express yesterday.” She sounded even more stern than usual, and her accent was very pronounced.

“This was a very serious matter, with physical assault and the use of dangerous spells, that while not deadly in themselves, could have caused grievous bodily harm.”

She looked at Wilkins, Noor, Van, then at me.

“It was caused by bullying and lack of rational thought. Firstly, I want to say that bullying will not be tolerated and there will be serious repercussions. You are not to bully anyone based on gender, blood status, race, sexual orientation, religion, magical ability  _ or any other reason _ . I repeat that there will be serious repercussions. If any of you are experiencing this, you are to report to a staff member; do not take matters into your own hands.”

Her eyes bored into me.

“You will notice that we are one student short today.”

Heads turned to the Gryffindor table where Silvanus was noticeably missing.

“Spells that cause physical harm to other students that are deadly and also spells that cause damage to school property were both already expellable offenses. It has been determined by examining the wands of the accused that Mr Silvanus used a Fire Jet Hex that could have caused death and also lit the Hogwarts Express on fire, endangering other students not involved in this altercation.”

She paused and there was absolute silence.

“Because of this and his previous offenses,he has therefore been expelled. That is how seriously this is going to be taken.”

She sat.

Wilkins stood.

“I for one, regret my part in this fight and would like to offer my apologies to anyone I wronged. I have been bullied before for being a Half-Blood and shouldn’t have picked on anyone else for being different.”

He sat down, red-faced.

“Does anyone else wish to speak?” Professor McGonagall asked, a dangerous tone in her voice.

I stood and spoke before I could think.

“I don’t regret it. If I could do the same again, and I’d make sure to take a bigger force with me. My dad stood up for what was right when he was a student, and I can’t do less. Without Dumbledore’s Army and those who helped against the Death Eaters, we would not be here today. You can’t fight hate passively. When someone speaks hate, of course you should tell authority, but you also should fight, actively if necessary. Don’t let lies be spread without speaking against them. You can still see the scars on my dad’s hand from where he stood against hate.”

I sat, to some applause. McGonagall looked fit to kill and I knew I’d get a summons to her office later. Lily ran over from the Hufflepuff table and hugged me then sat by me. It took a long time for the noise level to return to normal from muffled whispers.

“What punishment did you get?” she asked.

“Detention with the House-elfs every weekday for two hours, for a month, 50 points from Ravenclaw, and a personal debit of 100 points before I can earn any,” I whispered back.

“You did the right thing; don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.” She hugged me again and went back to her table where she sat with her head close to Sally’s. My house-mates had varying reactions, based on their looks at me; some were approving, some just angry. As I was gathering my things to go to class, Justine approached me. I hadn’t realized how tall she was; she stood a full head over me.

“Thank you,” she said and held out a hand. I looked at it strangely before just hugging her.

“You’re welcome. Nobody deserves to be treated that way.” I broke the hug and we went our separate ways.

Classes that year were tense for a while; I was right that some of my classmates were angry about the loss of points. Some of the people that I thought were friends turned out to only be house-mates and others that I barely knew became closer. The hallways became quieter in general as everyone was on edge for a bit, and no one wanted to be the person to start trouble.

It felt like the professors were keeping a close eye on me, especially after a very angry talking-to from McGonagall. She’d said almost exactly the same thing to me that Professor Flitwick had said, but also added that she didn’t like me undermining her in front of the school. I just agreed with her out loud, but disagreed with her in my heart.

I watched the Hufflepuff team practice sometimes, surprised that they didn’t run me off, as I could see their strategy and tactics. Van was the new captain and he ran a tight ship, making sure that everyone kept to their tasks. I found my eyes tracking mostly from him to Lily, but always back to him. Lily had advanced a lot over the last year and their other Chasers were excellent. I was glad that Van got to stay on as captain and didn’t lose it over the incident on the train.

I knew we probably wouldn’t beat Hufflepuff this year, either, based on how young we still were and our lack of depth. I sighed at the prospect of another second-place season and a loss to them.

The first Hogsmeade weekend came and Lily headed off with Justine and Sally. Melinda and Cecilia were going on an extended weekend date in London now that they were of age and could Apparate, ostensibly to job-search, but I suspected to just be together for the weekend. I waved to Lily as she walked off and I started to go back to the Common Room to study when I bumped into Van.

“Hey! I was looking for you; fancy doing some flying?” he asked.

“What did you have in mind?” I asked as he fell into step next to me, shortening his long strides to match mine.

“I thought we might fly over the forest and the lake.” He smiled and my heart fluttered a bit. “I know a good picnic spot just on the other side of the lake, if you could convince your House-elf friend to pack one for us?”

I gulped and nodded. “Sounds good,” I said, my voice squeaking a bit. I felt my face reddening.

“I’ll meet you by the Quidditch pitch in an hour,” I told him.

“It’s a date,” he said, squeezing my arm.

He turned and walked to his common room and I to mine, my mind whirling: did he mean a  _ date-date, or just a date. _ I wasn’t sure what I wanted either. I always thought he was nice, and kind of handsome for a big guy. I flashed back to the kiss we’d shared after the U-15 championship and it didn’t seem special then, just exuberance on his part, but maybe it was more.

Daisy was more than happy to prepare a picnic for us. She even had a special hamper that hooked over a broom handle and secured with a removable Sticking Charm. She showed me how to Stick and Unstick it. She gave me a kiss on either cheek, Continental style and I wondered again if she’d originally worked for a family on the mainland, but she wouldn’t talk about her past before Hogwarts.

I met Van at the Pitch. We both mounted and flew lazily over the forest. I wanted to race, but with the hamper stuck to my broom, I didn’t think it would have maneuvered very well. It was cold and I was glad I’d bundled up. We didn’t talk much as we flew, since it was hard to hear with the wind whistling by, but we still seemed to know where each other was turning and flying. He signalled towards the lake and I nodded. We dove and flew low over it, watching the dark form of the giant squid writhing under it. He pointed toward a clearing and we both landed there.

“Cold?” he asked.

“Yeah.” Even in my coat and heavy jeans, I was shivering. He dug a pit with his wand and conjured a violet flame in it. I Summoned a couple of logs and shaped them into a rough bench and table. His fire warmed the area immediately and I opened my coat to let in the warmth. He removed his and sat next to me in just short sleeves and jeans.

“Aren’t you cold, even with that fire?” I asked.

He shook his head. “When you’re a big guy like me, you’re always warm. It can be nearly freezing outside, but I’m going to still be roasting.”

“Must be nice,” I said. “Lily and I are both tiny, so we get cold easily. Dad’s the same way; our house has blankets and throws everywhere to bundle up in.”

“Sounds nice,” he said. “Maybe you could invite me over sometime, I’d like to see your house if you think your Dad would be okay with it.”

I opened the hamper and started putting stuff on the make-shift table. There were two spelled jars that I thought must hold tea, a roast chicken that had been pulled off the bone, mushy peas, a crusty loaf of brown bread, some condiments and a treacle tart. There was a matching dinnerware, cutlery and glass set that looked like it was from the 50’s (the 1850’s, that is).

“I don’t know, he’s pretty picky about who comes into our house, but if Lily or I vouched for you, then he’d probably be okay with it.” I opened the first flask and it held hot Earl Grey like I thought. The second one though, was Butterbeer.

I pulled out plates, cutlery and glasses and started dishing myself out some food. Van did the same and we made small talk about classes and Quidditch. He’d managed to get eight O.W.L’s, but had decided to only go for six N.E.W.T’s.

“Lily said she’s probably only going to go for five, but I think I might try for eight. At least I don’t have to worry about O.W.L’s until next year.” I sighed.

“Yeah, she’s pretty driven to be a pro player,” he said. “I wouldn’t try to stand between her and her goals.” He laughed at his pun.

“How about you, going to turn pro?”

I pushed my food around the plate. “I mean, sure, I’d like to, but what would I have to give up? Lily and I have talked about this a lot. She’s willing to give up more than I think I am, but I know I’m good enough, and I’m one hundred percent sure she is, too.”

I met his eyes, his dark, dark, deep eyes.

“What-what ab-about you?” I stammered a bit, but not from the cold.

“If you’re cold, you can have my jacket.” He picked it up off the log next to him, but I just scooted up next to him. He put his jacket over both of us like a blanket. I leaned into him and he put his arm around me and pulled me in. He was warm just like he said. I turned back to the food.

After a while he said, “I’d like to play pro Quidditch, but my Dad’s set on me becoming an Apothecary and Potions Master. I do enjoy it, and I’m good at it, but a career doing it just doesn’t appeal to me. What about your Dad and Mum?”

I laughed. “Mum doesn’t care what I do, as long as it makes me happy. She’s the most carefree person. Do you know what a ‘hippie’ is?”

He nodded.

“Mum’s a lot like that. Dad’s...more complicated, but I think as long as I’m doing something productive, he’d be okay with it, too. Can we talk about something else?”

He tightened his arm on me. “Sorry.”

I looked back up at him and he looked concerned.

“No, nothing to be sorry about; I’d just rather not talk about this right now. It’s too nice a moment to think about that stuff.”

“I’d like to kiss you,” he said and I fell into his dark eyes again.

I gulped again and nodded. He lowered his head to mine and our lips met.

It was nothing like the kiss at the U-15 championship. This one was warm and soft and lasted forever and too short a time all at once. When he started to pull away, I put my hand behind his head and pulled him back in. I noticed he smelled good, spicy like cinnamon or nutmeg; I hoped I didn’t smell. I pulled away.

“Wow,” he said quietly.

“Yeah,” I said.

“Wish we’d done that before now.” He smiled, showing perfect white teeth.

“Me too. I didn’t know you felt like this,” I said, snuggling even closer under his jacket.

We finished lunch, kissed a bunch more than flew back, taking our time over the lake to enjoy the early winter sunset. We waited, hand-in-hand for everyone to come back from Hogsmeade. Lily, Sally and Justine came back at the same time. Sally noticed Van and me first and nudged Lily, who was deep in conversation with Justine.

“What?” I clearly heard her say, as Sally nudged her again. Then, she looked up and saw Van and I holding hands.

She smiled and rushed to hug me and then Van.


	14. Lily--Year 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Justine watches Lily practice. The Ravenclaw team uses an unusual strategy in the Hufflepuff-Ravenclaw match. Lily helps her sister and her cousin, Violet. A red-letter day all around.

Our game with Ravenclaw was fast approaching and Dora kept telling me that she had a surprise for us.

“Does your boyfriend know this?” I asked her, meaning Van. They’d been together for just under two months.

She laughed like Mum, long and hard. “Yeah, I keep teasing him with it, too. He just smiles and laughs.”

“He should; you guys don’t stand a chance,” I told her, half-jokingly. “It’s a push at Lead Chaser between you and me, but we’re better at two and three, and your Beaters just can’t compete with Van and Frank.”

She smiled enigmatically, and I thought of Mum again, but also of Dad’s smile when he had a secret or had bested Pandora in a bet.

“You’ll see,” she said.

Finally, Van came out of his Potions class and Dora went to talk to him before she went into the classroom for her class.

I had a free period, so I wandered off toward the Quidditch pitch meaning to practice. I saw Justine with Kaiya in her arms. Kaiya had decided that Justine was a great friend and had started spending some time with her in the Gryffindor common room as well as with me and Dora. I was slightly jealous, but I knew that if Kaiya was seeking Justine out, then Justine was a good person and that she likely was in need of a companion: Kneazles are super-perceptive and in tune to people’s emotions that way.

“Hey,” I said to Justine. Kaiya heard me, turned her head, jumped off Justine and ran to me, tail up and vibrating. She leapt into my outstretched arms and climbed up to perch on my shoulder.

“Hey,” Justine said back. “Off to practice?”

I nodded. “Gotta take any chance I get.”

She fell into step next to me. “Mind if I tag along?”

“Sure, but it’ll be boring, I’ll mostly just be doing sprints and practicing spin passing.”

She shrugged. “It’s sunny for once and I can always study for Herbology if I get bored. I just can’t remember all the uses of Bubotuber Pus.”

“I can help you with that after practice if you like, or tonight after dinner, if you’ll help me with Potions.” I laughed. “I can’t seem to figure out how to make sure my antidotes are correct.”

“Deal,” she said. “It’ll have to be after dinner though, since I’ve got Defence and then Astronomy after.”

“Yeah, okay.” We soon reached the pitch. I handed Kaiya to Justine, who took her. Kaiya immediately climbed onto Justine’s shoulder and peered out from under her long blonde hair. I noticed Justine’s long, long lashes and wondered idly if they would be soft or scratchy. I must have stared at her too long.

“All right?” she asked.

I blushed and nodded. I went to get my broom and a Quaffle from the shed. I inspected my broom carefully while Justine watched.

“Do you always check it so thoroughly?” she asked.

I nodded. “Always before flying. It could have been damaged, or, less likely, it could have been hexed while in storage. Safety first.” I finished my inspection and mounted. Kaiya’s eyes followed me and I half-expected her to leap off Justine’s shoulder and onto the broom. She merped quietly and snuggled up under Justine’s hair. My face flamed again, and I didn’t know why.

I jetted off, doing my end-to-end sprints of the pitch, then practiced putting spin on the Quaffle to curve its flight. My hands were so small that it was hard for me to grip it tightly enough to spin it. I could do it with a cricket ball, but the Quaffle was always a challenge. It was a skill I knew I’d have to master to take that next step eventually.

I looked down at a couple of points and Justine had her books out, but she was watching me instead of studying. Kaiya had leapt off Justine’s shoulder and was curled up in the sun at her feet, resting. Justine saw me watching and waved. I flew down to her, dropped the Quaffle and hovered next to her.

“Do you want a turn on my broom?” I asked.

She shook her head. “I don’t fly that well and I’m afraid I might damage it. It does look like fun to go that fast, though; I’ve always been scared to go much faster than a walking pace.”

“Climb up behind me and hold on,” I told her.

I saw her eyes flick to me, my broom, her books, Kaiya and then back to me. She put her books in her bag, stood and got on behind me. She held onto the broom between us.

“No, put your arms around my waist instead; you’ll be more stable.”

She put one hand around my waist first, then the other and clasped her fingers together. I could feel her shaking.

“If I start to go too fast, just squeeze and I’ll slow down, okay?”

“O-O-Okay,” she stuttered.

I started off at a walking pace, then slowly sped to a running pace. I lifted off the ground about twenty feet and then started to go faster. The broom’s acceleration was a bit sluggish with two of us on it, but it handled pretty well.

“Doing okay?” I shouted over the whistling wind.

“Okay!” she shouted back in my ear, causing my stomach to flutter from her breath on my ear; I could feel it even over the wind, it had a warm, tingling quality.

I rose up higher to the level of the hoops and did some tight turns in and out of them. She whooped and her grip tightened, but I could tell it was just to hold on and not to tell me to slow down. I knew it was almost time to go, so I did a sprint from one end to the other and back. Just as I reached half-way on the second pass she squeezed me to slow down. I slowed, descended and landed next to her pack.

“Thank you,” she said as she got off. Her hair was wind-blown, but looked lovely and her face was red. I noticed her eyes were a very light blue in the sun; I had never really noticed that before.

“You’re welcome,” I said. I scooped the Quaffle up, flew to the shed and put it away with my broom. I almost forgot my pack, but picked it up at the last moment. Kaiya opened an eye, saw us gathering our stuff and stood and stretched. I walked back with Justine to the castle with Kaiya trotting alongside us. Justine pulled her wand and unfrizzed her hair with it, until it was straight and gleaming again.

When we reached the entrance, we stopped.

“I’ve got Herbology next, so I’m going to head off to the greenhouses,” I said. She had told me she had Defence next, so she’d be heading inside.

I looked down at Kaiya. “Go to my dorm, okay?” She meowed and trotted off. I knew that meow; it meant, ‘I’ll do what I want.’

Justine started to enter the castle, then turned and hugged me. I returned it awkwardly. “Thanks for letting me watch and the flying.” 

She blushed deeply. “I’ll see you at dinner, and then we can decide where we’re going to do our study exchange.”

“You’re welcome; I enjoyed it. I don’t usually have someone out there with me when I do extra practice.” I touched her hand lightly then went off to the green houses with a little spring in my step.

I was a little late getting there, but Professor Longbottom just waved me to take my seat. He started lecturing about the Wiggentree and its effects on Dark Creatures.

“What’s up with your hair?” Sally whispered to me. “Did you forget to comb it after practice again?”

“Distracted, Justine was there,” I whispered back. Sally smiled.

Professor Longbottom must have noticed.

“Anything you want to share? Ms Dahl, Ms Lovegood-Potter?” he asked pointedly.

“No sir,” both Sally and I said simultaneously, then giggled.

It was good that I already knew all about the Wiggentree, since my mind kept wandering back to Justine’s blue eyes, her long lashes, her windblown hair, and the feel of her pressed against me on the broom. I had just started daydreaming what it would be like to feel those long lashes on my cheek when Professor Longbottom had us all go down to Professor Hagrid’s hut in a group to harvest some Wiggentree bark under his and Professor Hagrid’s watchful eyes. It took some careful negotiations with the Bowtruckles to not have them attack you.

Both Sally and I managed to get a couple grams worth of bark without being attacked, and both Professor Hagrid and Professor Longbottom gave us each five points.

Sally and I headed to Defence next, and I waved at Justine on her way out of it. Gryffindor had it with Slytherin, and Sally’s eyes followed Stephen Selwyn on his way out of the classroom. He noticed her looking, blushed, then put his head down and scurried away.

“He seemed embarrassed.” I laughed.

“It’s okay,” Sally said. “He’ll realize that he likes me soon enough.”

“Maybe you should ask him to go to Hogsmeade with us next time.” We went into Defence and took our seats.

“Hmm, that would likely leave you and Justine alone.” She side-eyed me. “Or was that your plan?” She laughed again and I felt my face flame up.

“I--I don’t know,” I muttered, but then class started and we didn’t have time to talk anymore.

Two weeks later, Pandora stared at me across the pitch as we waited for Madame Hooch to blow the whistle. 

Madame Hooch looked at her watch, raised the whistle to her mouth. The murmur from the crowd grew to cheers as she blew the whistle.

Then all Hell broke loose.

All of the Ravenclaws broke off at the whistle blowing except for their Keeper and one of their Beaters. They all went into search patterns for the Snitch.

I heard the announcer. “It looks like the Ravenclaws are all looking for the Snitch. Is that legal?”

I knew the answer and I knew what Ravenclaw was up to. Van obviously did, too and he shouted at me and the other two Chasers to score as much as possible.

I grabbed the Quaffle and we began to pelt the Ravenclaw Keeper with shots as fast as possible.

McGonagall’s voice came over the pitch.

“It’s the Parkinson strategy. Everyone on the team except the Keeper tries to find the Snitch as fast as possible before the other team scores fifteen goals. It’s legal as long as no one but the Seeker touches the Snitch and the Keeper doesn’t leave his scoring area.”

Everytime we scored, their Keeper held the Quaffle as long as he could without incurring a penalty before returning it to play. Van and Frank kept hitting the Bludger at the Ravenclaw Chasers as they searched. They had hit a Bludger at their Seeker, but that was a penalty and Ravenclaw scored on it. So now we had to score sixteen goals.

I could hear the short and long whistles that the Ravenclaw team was using to communicate and if we’d had more time, I maybe could have figured out the code, but I was too busy trying to score on their Keeper (who was excellent, by the way; he stopped close to forty-five percent of shots the previous season).

“Ravenclaw is up one hundred thirty to ten,” the announcer said, then his voice rose in excitement.

“It looks like the Ravenclaw strategy has paid off. I think Pandora Lovegood-Potter spotted the Snitch and now Sorinson is after it with Shafiq hot on her tail.”

I slipped another goal by and their Keeper held it and watched Sorinson and Shafiq fly. Madame Hooch counted loudly to thirty before their Keeper tossed the Quaffle back into play with a low throw toward the ground. He’d always gone for the long lob before and the other two Chasers and I were out of position. By the time I had managed to catch up to the Quaffle again, I heard the whistle blow three times.

“Ravenclaw wins 160-140!” the announcer shouted. “That has to be one of the most unusual matches ever seen at Hogwarts!”

The crowd was going crazy with cheers, boos and derisive whistles. Reactions definitely seemed to be mixed. We lined up on the ground and shook hands. When Dora shook Van’s hand I saw him lean down and whisper something to her. She shook her head, but then had to move on to me.

“Great strategy!” I told her as we shook hands, then hugged. “I would never have thought of doing that.”

“I read it in an old season recap from the 1950’s.” She grinned, but then had to move down the line to shake the hands of the rest of the team.

Later that night, Sally, Justine and I met in the library to study; we had just decided to go to a classroom on the third floor because Madame Pince was giving us the stink-eye. As we were finishing packing up, Dora came in. She looked around, spotted us and came over.

“Go ahead,” I told Sally and Justine. “I’ll catch up with you in a bit.” They left and Dora also left, but we went to a different classroom.

“Are you upset by what we did today?” she asked me when we had sat down.

I laughed. “Of course not. I admit I was startled; but, it was a great strategy, and one I’ll never fall for again.” I tapped my head with my wand pensively. “I don’t think Van will, either.”

Her face dropped.

“He was very unhappy with me,” Dora said quietly.

“Did you guys break up?”

She shook her head. “No,” she said shakily.

“No,” she repeated. “But, he said he doesn’t want to talk to me for a bit.” I could see her shoulders shake. I had an epiphany then. I guess I had always known, but seeing her like this made it clear. She pretended to be tough, but her self-doubt was tormenting her. I think if we still lived together in the same house at school, I would have seen it earlier.

“It’s okay, I’ll talk to him later. I don’t think he’ll be upset after a few days.” I scooched up close to Dora and held her as she shook. After a couple of minutes, she sniffled then stood. I stood too and we hugged for a long time.

“Sally and Justine are waiting for you; you should go.” Dora turned to leave.

“You should join us tonight. We’re going to be going over Herbology first, then Defence and I know you can use some help in Herbology, yeah?”

She nodded and followed me.

When we got there, Justine and Sally had their heads down together over something, but it wasn’t a textbook. When we came closer I could see it was the  _ Prophet _ .

A man and a woman were kissing in a photograph and when the man turned to face the camera, I could see it was Dad. His head moved slightly and I recognized the woman he was kissing.

I snatched the paper away and read the caption.

_ One of our most eligible bachelors, Harry Potter, has been spotted about town with Gabrielle Delacour, disgraced daughter of the French Minister of Magical Trade. _

“Did you know about this?” Sally asked, although I think she knew the answer. I shook my head and handed the paper to Dora.

She looked at the photo, read the caption and also shook her head.

“I mean, we thought Dad was seeing someone on the down-low, but we weren’t sure.” Pandora giggled.

“Cradle-robbing a bit, though isn’t he?” Sally asked. “She doesn’t look like she’s more than twenty.”

“She’s part-Veela, so that probably accounts for it,” I said. “I think she’s five or six years younger than Dad, so thirty-two or thirty-three.”

Justine picked up the paper again, whistled, and pointed at Gabrielle. “I hope I’ll look like that when I’m in my thirties.”

“You will.” The words just popped out of my mouth. My face reddened and so did Justine’s.

“Thanks,” she said softly.

“Do you care that Dad’s going out with Gabrielle?” I asked Dora.

She shook her head. “He deserves to be happy.”

She grabbed the paper and stuffed it in a bin.

“Can we just study?”

Sally dug out her Herbology text. Justine’s eyes and mine met and I could see something in her face. The thump of Sally’s book hitting the table broke us from our reverie and we started to go over our Herbology notes together, Dora sitting close by my side. I kept looking up and seeing Justine looking up at the same time.

“For God’s sake!” Pandora snapped at me. “Just fucking ask her out already!”

“What?” I asked.

“Sally and I can’t concentrate with you and Justine making moon-eyes at each other.” Dora barked a single laugh.

“Is that what we were doing?” I asked Justine. She lowered her flaming cheeks, then nodded.

“Yeah,” her voice came softly. “I think we were.”

“Well…” I paused.

She lifted her head and met my eyes.

“Yes, I would love to go to the next Hogsmeade weekend with you.”

Sally started the laughter this time, and then we all joined in. I stood up and went to Justine and hugged her tightly.

I got back to the common room late that night, a bounce in my step that wasn’t there this morning and certainly not after the match. Sally had left before and then Justine. Dora and I talked more before I finally decided to go to bed. She told me that she was going to finish her History of Magic homework before leaving.

When I entered the common room, I almost banged my head on one of the hanging plants. I was glad no one was there to see me when I heard a sniffle.

Looking around, I saw Violet curled up in a ball in one of the giant armchairs. She was so tiny when she sat like that.

I sat next to her on the chair and got cried on for the second time that day.

“It’s all so hard,” she said in a small voice after a while.

“What is?” I asked.

She wiped her eyes and waved a hand vaguely. “Everything. I can’t seem to do anything right.” She sniffled again. “And I miss Daddy.”

“I miss my Dad, too,” I said simply. “As for doing things right, you’ll get it. There are things that we’re all good at. I’m good at Charms and Quidditch; Pandora’s good at...well most things, but not Herbology; Sally’s good at Potions, but she’s not really great at anything else magic-wise. Please don’t tell her I said that. But, she’s really good at being there for someone and she’s the best friend you could imagine.”

I sighed.

“What I’m trying to say is, you’re just getting started and you’ll figure out what you’re good at. You have plenty of time.”

I hugged her and she hugged me back.

“If you need help with something, please come and ask. I’m here to help you with whatever you need.”

She pulled away slightly.

“Can you show me the right wand motion for the Levitation Charm? I just can’t seem to get it and I think Professor Flitwick is losing patience with me.”

I laughed and she flushed.

“No,” I said softly, “I’m not laughing at you.”

I lifted her head and looked directly into her eyes.

“I was laughing because Professor Flitwick has infinite patience and a great sense of humor. I wish sometimes I were Ravenclaw because then he’d be my Head of House.”

I took out my wand and showed her by levitating a lamp, then had her try. Her pronunciation was good, but her wrist was too lax for her springy wand; if your wand is rigid, you can be more lax with it, but if it's too springy, then being lax just adds to it and you get resonance. I straightened her wrist and told her to imagine the wand as an extension of her forefinger. It wasn’t the accepted method, but it had helped me when I was learning.

After a few tries, she managed to levitate a book, then a fire-dog. I stayed up with her for another hour or so and went over her homework with her, before she yawned and I sent her off to bed.

I dug in my pack and began to write in my diary.

_ Dear diary: _

_ This was one of the best days ever... _


	15. Harry--Summer before Year 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Harry and Gabrielle dig deeper into the DEC killer. They also discover that maybe they're not just fake dating.

Gabrielle came into my office with my lunch. She looked good in her Muggle-style suit. She closed the door and sat our lunches on my desk. I rose and gave her a kiss, mostly for the benefit of the Aurors in the office to keep up Gabrielle’s cover.

We ate while discussing her antiques business and some of the import restrictions. Turnblad watched us surreptitiously from her desk, a frown on her face. Ritter’s ideas about Gabrielle were working, but it was also turning some of the Aurors against me. I had heard rumblings about ineptitude and resting on my laurels and the press had started to get in on it more, complaining that I was concentrating more on my love life than catching dark wizards, especially the DEC killer.

“...and this is why I can’t bring that Egyptian scarab column in. Also it’s why the Egyptian Wizarding Antiquities Ministry wants me to return the mummy wrappings that I have in inventory.” She finished off her meal and began clearing the desk of food wrappers and debris.

I wrapped up the last of my sandwich, cast a freshness charm on it and stuck it in my small ice-box. It would keep until later.

Gabrielle moved around the desk to sit on my lap. She kissed me deeply and I kissed her back. I looked up guiltily like I had forgotten something, pushed her off, raised my wand and frosted the windows of my office. I also cast the Silencing Charm and sealed the door.

“Finally,” Gabrielle said.

“Yeah, it’s hard to pretend sometimes,” I said, digging out the DEC Killer files.

She laughed. “But not all the time. That kiss was particularly nice.”

She had helped me expand out the search further than we had so far.

We looked over two steps further out from where we had started. Now we were looking at cousins and aunts and uncles. I had the feeling we were too far afield, but we had to do something. I also had the rest of my squad I was responsible for and the bad feelings from them weren’t helping.

After a while, I looked at my watch and sighed.

I put the files back, and mussed up my hair. Gabrielle hitched her skirt up so it was riding just a bit off-kilter and put a tiny smear in her lipstick. To anyone outside it would look like we had been fucking in my office. We had had an hour today, but really hadn’t gotten any further than we had before.

I unfrosted the windows, removed the Silencing Charm and the door lock. She left and I kissed her by the open door. Turnblad gave us both the stink-eye.

“Thanks for lunch,” I said breezily.

She giggled in a way that I knew had Veela charm behind it and I saw at least two heads look up from their paperwork to watch us.

“Anytime, lover,” she said. She lifted a hand to my cheek in farewell before walking away with a little extra sway to her walk.

Turnblad actually spoke up.

“Do you really think a long _lunch_ is the best use of your time right now?” I could hear the emphasis on lunch and sighed inwardly.

“I think what I do on my lunch break is my business, Turnblad.” My face hardened. “Now, do you have the surveillance reports on Edward Wilkins and Alphonse Carrow?”

She nodded curtly and held them up.

I stalked to her desk and snatched them out of her hands. As I closed the door to my office I could hear the whispering start in the office outside.

I frosted my window again and read the reports.

Carrow was a red herring that I’d been sending some of them on because we thought we might have a leak in the office. Someone had been releasing more details about Gabrielle and I than Ritter and I wanted and also we were afraid that someone might be leaking to the DEC Killer without realizing it, or maybe even be working with him. So far, nothing about Carrow had leaked, so this was likely wasted time.

Edward Wilkins; however, looked promising. He’d lost his older sister in the war. I barely remembered her from Hogwarts; she’d been a Ravenclaw two years ahead of me. I wasn’t clear why she had returned to fight, but her file made it seem like she’d come to get her brother and had gotten stuck there when the teachers sealed the school from Voldemort. I didn’t remember him at all.

Pandora had mentioned a Wilkins boy before and I looked in the file. Sure enough, Edward had a son Pandora and Lily’s age that was going to Hogwarts. It clicked in my head and I remembered that he was involved in the altercation on the train.

I read through the rest of Wilkins’s file and sighed. His wand didn’t match the blackthorn one we knew was used in the assault on the Malfoy’s French manor and he also didn’t match Gabrielle’s description.He was too tall and his hair was red instead of light brown. I thought he looked a bit like a pumpkin.

I worked with my team the rest of the day and got home late. Pandora and Lily were already in bed. I put down my briefcase and took off my Auror robes. Sitting down in just my jeans and tee-shirt, I ate the rest of the sandwich that Gabrielle had brought for my lunch.

“Daddy?” I heard Lily ask from down the hall.

I went to her door and cracked it open to talk.

“Yes, Lily-love?” I asked.

“Just making sure it was you. Love you,” she said sleepily. “There’s a letter on the side table for you from Dudley.”

“Thanks. I love you, too. Get some sleep.” I closed her door.

I went to Pandora’s door and cracked it open, too.

“Love you, Pandora.” I started to close the door when she mumbled back, “...love you...Van.”

I smiled and closed the door.

I went to the kitchen, got a couple of beers from the fridge and sat back down in the living room. I grabbed Dudley’s letter and slit it open.

_Harry,_

_Thank you for allowing me to write and letting Violet visit. She tells me that Lily was a big help with her schoolwork last year. I would still like to sit down with you and apologize to you in person. I understand your work is hard right now, but if you ever have the time, please contact me._

_Here is a picture that Violet took with her new camera. She said that Pandora helped her develop it and that’s why the people move._

_Dudley_

I pulled out the photo and looked at it. It was Lily and Pandora standing next to Van and Justine. I smiled as they smiled and waved at the camera. Van and Justine both stood a full head taller than the girls. I wondered why both Lily and Pandora were dating someone so much taller than they were, but shrugged it off as unimportant. When all this DEC killer stuff was done, I’d sit down with Dudley and hash it all out.

I was relaxing with the telly on for a bit before I went to bed when Gabrielle came in. I knew it was her from the way my wand twitched when she bypassed the wards. I heard her put something in the fridge then she came in and kissed me on the back of the neck. We did this at home just in case the girls were watching so they wouldn’t get suspicious that Gabrielle and I weren’t really dating.

I involuntarily shivered at her lips on my neck. Usually, I could just shrug off the physical reactions of her kisses, but there were a few times that I couldn’t. I stood, turned around and pulled her over the couch. We both tumbled to the floor with her on top of me. I kissed her, then slid my lips down her neck.

“The girls?” she whispered _._

“They’re in bed, but they could wake up if we’re too noisy.”

She pushed off, stood, held out her hand to help me stand and we went to my bedroom hand-in-hand.

When we got there, I closed the door and Muffliatoed the room.

“How was the rest of your day?” I asked.

She took off her jewelry, unselfconsciously stripped down to her knickers and bra, which I noticed matched. She caught me staring and smiled.

“Like what you see?” she asked and struck a pose with her hips to one side.

“You know I do,” I said. We’d had the discussion before that it was okay to look. It took me a while to get used to it, but having to share a bedroom when the girls were home made it important. I found it also helped with the pretend.

“I’m going to go shower, then we can talk about what I found, okay?” She walked to the bathroom and I found myself watching her arse as she walked away. She turned and caught me watching.

“Want to join me?” she asked, stopping just inside the door.

I must have looked surprised because she blinked then blushed deeply, the crimson stain spreading down her cleavage like spilled wine.

“I...I would, but that’s not a good idea,” I whispered back hoarsely.

She walked back to the bed and sat beside me.

“I know we shouldn’t since we’re working together, but it’s not like you’re my supervisor or my partner; we’re colleagues working together.”

I shook my head. “I don’t do casual.”

She smiled. “I know that; I’ve read your file.”

We both laughed. Then she was on my lap, straddling me and we were kissing. A few seconds later and my shirt and jeans were off and her bra and knickers were flung aside.

“Do you want to stop?” she asked. “Little Harry says no, but what do you say?” She grinded against me through my boxers.

I gulped then shook my head.

Later as we lay wrapped in each other’s arms, I asked her, “How long have you felt this way?”

“Off and on since I was eighteen.” She laughed.

“What?” I pulled back and looked directly at her face.

“I had a crush on you after you rescued me during the Tri-Wizard tourney, but grew out of it, then when I was eighteen and I was visiting Bill and Fleur after school, but before I was officially in the ‘antique business,’ I saw you at the Burrow and the crush came back. I don’t know why it happened then. I’d seen you a bunch before, but maybe it was seeing you so happy with Luna. She was pregnant with the twins and you were both glowing. Then it kind of receded when I went back to France, and came back when we met again at Shell Cottage that one Easter after Luna left.”

I remembered that visit. It was only a year after Luna had left for Rolf and I was still hurting. I had been sitting on the beach idly throwing rocks into the ocean when Gabrielle sat down next to me. It was cold, so we were both wrapped up in coats and scarves.

_“The ocean is peaceful.” She said quietly._

_“Except when it’s storming,” I said and flung another rock into the whitecaps that belied her words._

_“Is it often storming?”_

_I sighed. “Yeah, usually.”_

_“But not always. They’ll rage and blow, then they’ll pass.” She slid up closer so her hip and shoulder was pressed up against mine._

_“I guess,” I said and lowered my head._

_“If you ever want to talk, I can listen.” She grabbed my hand and squeezed._

_I pulled my hand back. “Thanks,” I said, not really meaning it._

_We sat in silence until it got too dark, then she stood and held out her hand to me. I took it and let her help me rise, then released it. We walked back to Shell Cottage in silence and I left soon after._

I came back to the present.

“Looking back on it, I can see you were trying to make me feel better; thank you.”

“You’re welcome,” she said, snuggling in closer. I could smell her hair, like I had so much when we were ‘dating,’ but this time it seemed different. It took me a moment to realize what that difference was; it was us co-mingled. It smelled right.

“You just weren’t ready then.”

“No, I wasn’t ready for anything then; you’re right.” I kissed the top of her head and she raised her lips to mine. We lost ourselves in each other for a while, then slept.

We awoke, sticky in each others’ arms, to my alarm blaring.

I kissed her and hugged her tight, then she went to go shower. I did some quick exercises that Cho had shown me while we were dating and thought of her briefly. Lily wrote to Cho regularly, and she was doing well in China. The team was getting ready to go on a Pan-Asian tour then come to Europe for training with some pro teams there.

The sight of Gabrielle coming back in naked from her shower pulled my thoughts away from Cho. I paused in my sit-ups and watched her get dressed. She noticed and smiled, then threw a clean pair of pants to me.

“You need to shower, too.”

I stood and gave her a quick kiss on the way to the bathroom. When I came out, she had laid out clothes for me for the day, including fresh Auror robes.

I dressed and made sure all my required items were in my robes before I slid them into my pack. I would put them on just before I left the house, but not a moment before.

When I went down the hallway to the kitchen, I could hear the girls laughing with Gabrielle. They had liked her instantly. When I turned the corner, I saw what the laughter was about.

The magical waffle-maker was malfunctioning and batter was spraying out of it all over the counter. Gabrielle was poking at it with her wand while Lily and Pandora protected her from the hot batter with Shield Charms. I knew it would show up on the Trace reports, but since both Gabrielle and I were home, it would be ignored.

Gabrielle finally hit the right counter-charm and with one last ‘glurp,’ the waffle-maker spat out a last bit of batter and turned off.

“Well, that was unexpected,” I said.

They all turned to me with their wands up. I was struck by how similar their poses were.

“Everyone okay?” I asked.

They all nodded, then looked at each other and burst out laughing again.

I took the rest of the batter and made pancakes as they cleaned the kitchen. We all sat down and had breakfast together.

“What’s different?” Pandora asked as were doing the washing up.

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“I don’t know.” She said, side-eyeing me. “There’s something different about you and Gabrielle today.”

Just like her mother, I thought, she notices things.

“Hm, nothing different,” I said.

I could see the slump in her shoulders and she knew I was lying.

“Look, there is something, but it’s between Gabrielle and I, okay?” I looked her in the eyes.

She smiled and nodded. I think she just wanted me to admit it.

“Okay, Dad, keep your secret,” she laughed.

“I will,” I said haughtily and she laughed harder.

Gabrielle and Lily came back in from the living room. Gabrielle kissed me on the cheek as she left for her cover job.

“See you at lunch, love,” she said.

“Lunch,” I told her.

“Gabrielle is going to drop me off at Justine’s and then she’ll pick me back up when she gets off work, okay?” Lily asked, following Gabrielle out the door.

“Okay, see you tonight.” I told her. When she’d first started going to Justine’s place, I went with her and helped Justine’s parents beef up their wards. I think Mrs Eliot was a bit embarrassed at the state of their wards, but really, for a non-Auror she had done a fine job. Mr Eliot seemed a bit strained, but that often happened when people met me for the first time; he loosened up later when we had dinner together.

“What are your plans for today?” I asked Pandora.

“Reading. I’m going to try to get as far ahead in Transfiguration as I can since OWLs are coming up this year.”

I hugged her and then she went back to her bedroom while I Apparated to work.

When I got there, Rita Skeeter was waiting for me outside of the Auror offices in her ugly, bright green robes.

“So, Mr Potter, any comment for the press?” she said, her quill poised to write by itself on her notepad.

“No comment,” I said automatically.

“I have sources that say you’re using your office to have liaisons with your ‘girlfriend’ instead of working on your cases.” She smiled sickeningly.

“And I have information that says, ‘no comment’,” I said, pushing past her.

“Six years and you’re no closer to finding the killer; you or Ritter. Losing your touch?” Her quill scratched on the pad.

“No comment,” I said again, closing the door behind me. When I turned around Turnblad was standing in front of me with a scroll. She shoved it into my hands.

“I have plenty of comments for her. Here’s my resignation, _Mr Potter.”_ She squeezed by me, opened the door and then left, talking to Rita.

I sighed. I hated losing Turnblad, because she was competent, but what we were doing was more important than one Auror, and if she decided to come back after this was over and she discovered what was going on, I’d be on her side.

“She won’t be the only one,” Parsons and DeWald stood from their desks.

“What?” I asked.

“If you don’t get your act together, others are going to leave,” Parsons said. I knew he meant him and a few others.

“I promise, we’re making progress,” I lied smoothly.

DeWald laughed.

“Not that I can see. We don’t even have any viable suspects for the DEC killer anymore and that’s the only thing the press cares about.”

I held out my hands to them and raised my voice so the whole office could hear.

“If we haven’t solved this in the next year and half, I’ll resign.”

Parsons took a step back, bumped into his chair and sat down hard.

“I didn’t mean...well…” he stammered.

It had just come out of my mouth, but I discovered I meant it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you to everyone who has stuck it out so far. I do have the next two chapters written and ready for editing, but it will be a bit before getting to them. Sorry for the uneven posting schedule. Also, I see where this plot has meandered too far, and I'm sorry. This is my first novel-length story that will be completed and it has been a learning experience.
> 
> This chapter is unbeta-ed, so any mistakes are mine and mine alone.


	16. Pandora--Year 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Pandora and Lily discover they are being heavily scouted by professional teams. Pandora encounters a scout and learns there is a chance that Lily could play for England. Lily quits Quidditch.

I went to the Hufflepuff tryouts, since Violet was trying out...and also to watch Van. I loved to watch him fly and when he ordered the Hufflepuff team around, his deep voice made me tingle just like he was kissing me.

Lily was obviously going to make the team, she was probably the best player at Hogwarts since Dad or Oliver Wood. I sometimes wished that Dad had been able to play professionally, because I saw just how good a natural flyer he still was at his age.

Lily helped Van organize the tryout, I’m pretty sure to prepare her for next year when she was likely going to be Captain. I looked down at the Prefect badge on my robes and sighed. Lily wasn’t surprised when she wasn’t chosen as a Prefect, but she was still disappointed and didn’t want to show it. Mum noticed and asked pointed questions until Lily admitted that she really didn’t want to be a Prefect, she just wanted to be chosen.

Gabrielle also seemed happy that I’d been chosen, but I couldn’t make out exactly why. I mean, I knew she was happy for me, but it was hard to tell if it was genuine or if she just wanted to please Dad. Dad was distracted; the press was really pushing him now to solve the killings, especially since the DEC Killer had written to the  _ Prophet _ again taunting the Aurors and Dad in particular. Rita Skeeter had published a scathing interview with Auror Turnblad about it and only fanned the flames more.

I heard LIly’s voice from the pitch and turned my attention back. She’d just called up Seeker candidates. Violet joined six other hopefuls. After seeing her fly in the extra classes Madame Hooch ran for first years, I was pretty sure that she wouldn’t make the team this year, or even the reserves, but the experience would be good for her for next year.

“That’s your sister, yeah?” a voice asked from beside me as he sat down.

I turned and looked. It was Terrence McGee from the Wasps. He’d retired a few years ago and was a scout now. I watched as other scouts from most of the other pro teams sat down. They were often at the matches, but I’d never noticed any at tryouts before.

“Yes,” I said, holding out my hand to shake his. “I’m Pandora and that’s Lily. The captain is Van Nguyen.”

“They don’t mind a rival watching their tryouts?” he asked, a smile on his lips.

I shook my head. “Lily would just tell me about it anyway, and Van’s my boyfriend, so he would too.”

He raised his eyebrows at that. “Isn’t he seventeen?”

“Just turned, and I just turned sixteen, so it’s not creepy, okay?” I asked with an edge to my voice that I had learned from Dad.

“Okay, okay!” he said. “I’m sorry, it was none of my business, and I apologize.”

Lily and Van ran the candidates through some drills. Just like I thought, Violet was far outmatched by two other, older students, but she flew really well and I thought she’d be on the reserves next year and on the team in her fourth year if she kept it up.

After a while, Van took the Beater hopefuls aside and worked with them while Lily ran the Chaser hopefuls through their paces while flying alongside them. Everyone knew she’d make the team for sure, but they had her do the tryouts, too, to show it was all above-board.

“I saw her last year, of course, but she’s going to be even better this year.” McGee leaned in and whispered conspiratorially, “We are interested in signing both of you when you’re of age.” He handed me a card.

I took it automatically. I was shocked that he’d be so bold; the scouts didn’t usually approach students directly; I think maybe they weren’t permitted to.

“I...Thank you,” I finally stuttered out.

“We don’t require NEWTs, so as soon as you’re of age, you can sign. We’ll offer a good bonus.” He moved off to sit with the other scouts.

The Hufflepuff team came out pretty much as I expected: Lily was lead Chaser, Van was Beater and all their other positions looked solid with a lot of returning players. Violet didn’t get chosen for the reserves, but was encouraged to try again next year along with a couple of others.

Violet came over and sat next to me, tears welling, but unspilled in her eyes.

“I didn’t make the team my second year, either,” I told her.

“Really?” she asked.

“Yeah,” I said, putting my arm around her. “But, I practiced and got better and came back the next year and fucking put those shit-heads in their places.”

She laughed at my language and then the tears came. I let her cry on me for a bit then pushed. her back so she could see my face.

“You have some natural talent, but you’re going to have to practice and practice hard. Ask Van if you can come to the practices and help out and watch and I’ll bet he’ll let you as long as you aren’t in the way. You can also always practice extra with Lily or me; I know she won’t mind.”

She sniffled, hugged me and then went to gather her stuff. As she was leaving the pitch, she waved at me. A few seconds later, Lily hovered near me on her broom.

“Did she take it hard?” she asked me.

I made a see-sawing motion with my hand.

“She was upset, but I think she understood. She’s not ready.” I motioned her closer and she landed on the stands next to me; not a mean feat to hover-land like that. I saw a couple of the scouts watching us.

I leaned in and whispered, “McGee from the Wasps wants to sign us when we turn seventeen. Also, I’m pretty sure all these scouts are here for you.”

She turned her head slightly to look at the scouts, and they all shifted and pretended to not be watching us.

“Pretty sure they’re also here for Van and maybe Frank, and that they’ll be at your tryouts, too.”

I nodded.

“Talk later? After dinner, but before study group?” I asked.

She nodded and mounted her broom to rejoin her team.

Later, after she’d eaten, she went to the Gryffindor table to talk with Justine for a moment and I went to talk to Van.

“Good tryouts today; your team will be tough to beat.” I sat next to him and leaned into his side. He was so solid.

“Yeah, and you won’t get us with the same dirty trick you did last year.” I laughed, which made my face bounce up and down on his side. To anyone watching it probably looked like I was sniffing his armpit.

“I already apologized for that, and in the end it didn’t really make a difference in the Cup standings, only win-loss record.”

He snorted.

“Did you notice there were more scouts today?” I asked.

He nodded.

“I got a letter back from the Smythe Agency today and after our lawyer looks the contract over, I’ll probably sign with them as my agent.”

He lowered his head and looked right into my eyes.

“You and Lily should both sign with agents soon, too. I know they’ll want to recruit you both as soon as you turn seventeen.” He paused for a moment and then leaned in to whisper.

“Also, I think Lily might get a nod to join the English reserves next year. I overheard Felton from the Kestrels say that Breckley’s going to retire and that the Balton wants young blood on the reserves to build up for the future. I know he’s got his eye on her and Thomas from the Catapults.”

I blinked. I knew that England’s coach, Balton, had a thing for pushing young players, but I never thought that he would be looking at Lily even before she had a chance to play as a pro. Then I thought that meant I had a chance, too. I could play for England around the same time I turned pro and I wouldn’t have to wait for the next World Cup cycle.

Van could follow my train of thought.

“Yep, you might go, too.” He smiled and I fell into it for a moment.

“What about you?”

“Eh, I’ll probably get reserved the first couple of years wherever I go, but I’m fairly sure I’m not good enough to play for the national team right off the bat.”

His head turned to where Lily sat with Justine.

“But she is, and so are you.” He kissed me and I kissed him back. When he pulled back, I saw Lily stand and motion to me. I squeezed Van’s hand and then followed Lily out to a classroom.

_ “Muffliato.”  _ She silenced the room and closed the door.

I shook my head.

“Learned that from watching Dad and Gab?” I asked.

She laughed. “Also, I asked Professor Flitwick to teach it to me early and explained to him that I didn’t want to be overheard by paparazzi.”

“Which is actually mostly true,” I said.

“I just had the most interesting talk with Van. He overheard that Balton was looking to have you join the English reserves for the World Cup cycle that starts next year after you come of age.”

Her eyes widened. It wasn’t too often that I could surprise her and I took great pleasure in it when I did.

“But that means that one of their current Chasers is leaving.” She closed her eyes in thought for a moment.

“Either Breckley is retiring or Quentin’s injury is worse than he’s been letting on in the press.”

“It’s Breckley,” I told her.

“Seriously, do you want to sign as soon as you turn seventeen and leave Hogwarts before NEWTs?”

She thought for a moment. While she did, I spoke up.

“I’m going to finish out no matter what. I want those NEWTs for me and if that means I have to wait a cycle for the World Cup, then at least I’ll be a better player then for having nearly four years of experience under my belt.”

She chewed on her lip. “Look, I know I could play right out of school as soon as I turn seventeen; there are at least three teams that could use me at Chaser right now; you agree?”

“Five,” I said, “at least; and maybe seven that you’d be better than their third Chaser.”

“Flatterer,” she said, and started to say more.

“No,” I told her flatly. “Not flattery, truth.”

“I want to do it to prove I can do it, but I also want to finish school, you know?” she asked me (rhetorically, so I didn’t answer).

“But,” she continued, “I would also be making a shit-tonne of money and could live on my own right away, too.”

She sighed. “I don’t know yet, but I’m leaning toward signing at seventeen and leaving school. Justine pointed out that I could always study for my NEWTs during the off-season...”

I cut her off again.

“Do you think you’ll really have an off-season until you retire? I know you and you’ll practice like crazy during the off-season to get better; don’t lie to yourself. I’m not going to push you either way, but you know you’ll never get those NEWTs until after you retire if you do that.”

She opened her mouth and then closed it, so I just went on.

“Also, don’t you want to do that apprenticeship with Nimbus this summer and work there when you’re done with playing?”

She nodded.

“No matter how good your Charms are, they won’t take you without assurances that you’re going to pursue a Charms NEWT, yeah?”

She barked a laugh.

“I haven’t even played professionally yet and you’re already talking about after retirement.”

“Fuck, Lils, you’re the one who’s always had this shit planned out, not me!” My voice rose. “I’m just trying to make you think it through!”

“For someone who said they weren’t going to try to push me one way or the other, you sure sound like you think I should stay in school for NEWTs!” She was shouting now, too.

I sighed and said in a normal voice, “You know, I think I am.”

I hugged her.

“Plus, I’d miss your stupid face.”

She hugged me back.

“Bitch.”

“Arse.”

We sat in silence for a minute.

“We should at least both sign with agents; Van told me he’s probably singing with the Smythe Agency,” I said.

She made a face.

“What?” I asked.

“You know how they dropped Tybalt after her injury? I didn’t like that one bit.” She blew a raspberry.

“Maybe ask Cho her opinion?” I asked. Lily wrote to her regularly, and I did irregularly, and we were looking forward to seeing her in three years when she came to England with the Chinese National team. Fuck, maybe we’d be  _ playing  _ against them on the English team then.

She stood to go.

“I’ll also send a letter to Mr Wood and Mr Aulakh asking who they like as agents.”

She started walking out the door.

“Hey!” I called and she turned.

“Love you.”

She smiled.

“Love you, too.”

The first game came and we beat Gryffindor by 290-190. Hufflepuff beat Slytherin 260-40 in an absolutely mauling. Both Lily and I noticed the crowd of scouts getting bigger and some agents were in the stands, too. A couple of them approached us, but Headmistress McGonagall got wind of it and forbade them from it until we were of age. She also strongly hinted to us both that we needed agents and looked gratified when we told her that we were already looking into it.

After study group one night, Lily whispered something to Justine and kissed her before she left. I could tell she wanted to talk to me alone.

“I’m quitting Quidditch,” she said and then started crying.

“Wait! What!?” I yelled.

“I’m quitting Quidditch,” she barely said through her tears, and then she ran off. I tried to catch her, but tripped on my robes. When I got to the Hufflepuff Common room, Van answered the door and said he hadn’t seen her.

“She told you she’s quitting?” I asked him.

“What?” he said.

“She told me she’s quitting,” I said.

He stepped through the door and closed it.

“Quitting school? Going pro?”

“No, Quidditch.”

“The fuck? Why?” he asked me.

“I don’t know.” I sat in the hallway and he sat next to me. I leaned on him and cried. I could feel him shaking, too. I’d never seen him cry before.

“I don’t understand,” he said finally, sniffling a bit. “I wonder if it’s something I did or maybe Justine wanted her to quit or something.”

“I don’t think it’s either of those things,” I told him. “Lily’s stubborn and she probably won’t tell anyone the real reason until she’s forced to.”

He shook his head.

“I’ll talk to Sally; if she’s told anyone who’s not you, it’d be her.”

He stood to go. I pulled him back and kissed him.

“Hey, Van, I love you.” I’d never told him that before.

“I...I love you too, Pandora.” He kissed me again and we both felt better for a few seconds.

“We’ll talk about this some other time, okay?” I asked, squeezing his arms. He squeezed back, then tapped out the code to go into his Common Room again.

“Dahl!” I heard him shout for Sally as the door closed. I went to the Gryffindor tower next, but Justine wasn’t there. Wherever she was, it was likely with Lily.

The next day, Lily avoided me. I tried to talk to her after breakfast but she slipped away. Van shook his head at me, which I knew meant he’d not been able to talk to her either. Sally also shook her head at me. Justine just started to cry when I approached and waved me off. 

Finally, I went back to the Ravenclaw table and sat down until it was time for my first class.

Lily didn’t come down for lunch or go to her Potions class that day; I had waited outside it for her.

“Look, I’m going to try to find out what’s going on, but she wouldn’t talk when she came in last night,” Sally said as I walked with her to her next class. “She just got into bed, pulled her curtains and when I opened them, she just closed them again. I could hear her sobbing for a long time.”

“You don’t think it’s something between her and Justine do you?” I asked.

“I can’t imagine Justine hurting her that way, can you?”

I shook my head.

“I just hope she’s going to be okay,” I said and left Sally at the entrance so she could go to Herbology and I could go to Defence.

She didn’t show up for the next two study groups and neither did Justine. Sally left both of them early, obviously upset.

I was just about to leave the second one when Violet came in.

“You seen Lily?” she asked.

“She’s not talking to me lately,” I told her.

She sat down across from me and put her camera on the table.

“She seems really tired and upset,” Violet said.

“You’ve seen her?” I asked.

“She’s been to my dorm a couple of times and asked me to get her food, said she didn’t want to bother the House-elfs or something, but I think she was worried that they would just go to you; you both seem to get along with them pretty well.” She sighed.

“May I see your camera?” I asked to change the subject. I’d seen her around the school with it, but I hadn’t had a chance to see it up close yet; she’d had it in its case during the ride here on the Express.

“Sure, but be careful.” She slid it to me.

I didn’t know much about cameras, but it looked expensive to me, with a long lens of some sort and lots of dials and switches.

“How does it work here when Muggle technology doesn’t?” I asked, thinking of my mobile and its camera.

“It’s an SLR,” she said as if that meant anything to me.

“Ah, a rare opportunity for a Hufflepuff to teach a Ravenclaw,” I told her and she laughed.

“Assume I don’t know what an SLR is.”

“It’s all mechanical and SLR means single-lens reflex. You can combine them with a digital camera like you have in your mobile, but this one doesn’t have many electronics except for the feed, which I can do manually, and the flash, which isn’t really electronic like you think it is..”

She pointed out various features of it to me and I nodded sagely like I actually understood.

“It looks expensive, did your dad buy it for you?”

She shook her head. “Mr Creevey gave it to me. It’s an old camera from the 80’s. It would have been expensive when it was first made, probably five hundred Pounds.”

I whistled. That was a lot of money back then.

“Mr Creevey said he had a couple of these old cameras floating around and he wanted to see what I’d come up with here at school. He also thought he could sell some of the photos to parents, so it would kind of pay its own rental fee.” She took the camera back and strapped it on very carefully.

“Are you learning photography from him?” I asked.

She nodded excitedly. “When I saw the moving photos last year after Daddy sent them in, I had him get me a cheap mechanical camera and took some photos.”

I nodded. I had a couple of those photos at home.

Her words tumbled all over each other.

“Well he showed them to Mr Creevey over the school year and during the summer I worked with Mr Creevey learning all about it. The potions work is too advanced for me still, but I’ll learn it by the end of next year and as I send off the film to be developed, Mr Creevey is sending the photos back so I can hand them out here.”

She dug in her small purse and handed me one. It was me during a Quidditch match. I was a Blue and Bronze blur, but I could just make out my number. I came into frame and then left the photo in less than a second.

“It’s not a very good photo, I need a faster shutter speed to catch you without blurring so much, but that also means I need more light, so it’s a balancing act.” She bounced to her feet.

“But, just like Quidditch, I’ll get better with practice. You can keep that.” She left and I followed a moment later.

When Lily finally did come back to study group, she adamantly refused to talk about Quidditch and if any of us pushed it, she’d pack up and go, so we just left it alone. I could tell it was really bothering Justine and Sally, too.

The next game was against Hufflepuff and without Lily, we crushed them.

Slytherin and Gryffindor played a low scoring game with Slytherin barely winning, so we only needed to have a moderately good game against Slytherin to take a huge lead in the standings.

Our match against Slytherin was next and with a little luck and a good defensive strategy played by the Slytherins, they almost pulled it out, but we held on to win another low-scoring game. While I was heading to the after-party, it struck me what was up and I ran to the Hufflepuff common room to beat Lily there. I still just barely managed to catch up to her just as she was going in.

I caught up to her and let her know I figured it out, but she still wouldn’t really talk to me about it and said Justine had tried to convince her to return on Van’s orders. We hugged and it was tense, but I think we were going to be okay.

Something happened that night in the Hufflepuff dorm; I think Sally must have finally gotten through because I was woken up that night by knocking on my dorm door.

“Pandora, Justine Eliot is at the door for you,” Johnson’s voice said from the other side of the door.

I pulled my rumpled robes on and went to see what she wanted. I had barely opened it when Justine grabbed me and hugged me.

“She’s back.”

I hugged her back.

“That’s good,” I said and I meant it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This story is parallel to my story 'Quitting Quidditch.' Because that was done a couple of years ago, it may not line up exactly with this one, but I edited it some to match better.


	17. Harry--Summer before Year 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Gabrielle and Harry figure out who the DEC killer is. He finds out they know and takes a hostage.

Pandora was off at her mother’s and Lily was at her girlfriend’s house. Gabrielle was coming over and we were going to dig through the case notes again. We’d done this so many times before and were just getting nowhere, or rather, we were going in circles.

We kept coming back to the same suspects, and kept rejecting them. Most of them had solid alibis for the times of the murders and we were pretty sure it was just one man and not a leader and a disciple. The ones that didn’t have alibis for one of them had them for the others. The very few that didn’t have alibis, also didn’t fit the profile or weren’t similar in size or looks to the man Gabrielle had fought at the Malfoy’s villa.

I made some coffee for her and it was ready just as she came in. She’d been out looking at antiques to keep up her cover.

She put her bags on the kitchen counter and dug out some take-out boxes. I recognized them from an Italian place I liked.

“Thanks!” I said, reaching for one of them.

She slapped my hand away playfully. “How do you know that’s for you?”

“Well,” I said, “I assumed that you weren’t eating all this yourself, but please, go ahead and I’ll watch you with little doe eyes.”

As we ate, she sat the  _ Prophet  _ on the table and pointed at the editorial page.

“Yeah, I saw that already,” I said. I took it and re-read it anyway.

“They are raking you over the coals,” she said as she slurped up a noodle.

“I deserve it,” I said, crumpling up the paper and tossing it in the bin. “I’ve been working this for six fucking years and I’m not any closer to solving it. I want to put this sick fuck in Azkaban.”

“I know, I know.” She paused. “Maybe we just need to look at this a different way.”

“What different way?” I stood up too quickly and my chair went over with a bang. I stalked out of the kitchen and flopped heavily on the couch. She sat next to me and put a hand on my arm. 

“Let’s take a moment before we start. Tell me something about a time you enjoyed.” She held onto my hand.

I’d been thinking about Auror training and how the killer had to have some before she arrived. It made me think of the DA and the training we were doing then.

I told her all about Umbridge and what was going on then and the DA.

She held my hand, which she was still holding onto. “I’d wondered about these scars.”

She rubbed her fingers across them. “I must not tell lies,” was still just barely visible. I could have had it magically removed, but had decided not to.

I gripped her hand tightly, then let it go.

“Hold on, I’ve got a photo of all of us.” I went into my bedroom and dug around in my memory box until I found the photo of the DA.

I returned, sat next to her on the couch and handed it to her. She immediately grabbed my hand again.

“You were so young, so was Hermione and Ron.” She put a finger on Luna in the photo.

“Had you two gotten together yet?”

I shook my head. “No, it was a bit later.”

She traced her finger over all the people in the photo, then suddenly stopped.

“Who is this?” she asked, pointing at Colin Creevey.

“That’s Colin Creevey, he’s the one who took this photo.” I could still remember him setting up the camera on its tripod and fiddling with the timer.

“He’s the man I fought at the Malfoy’s villa.” She released my hand and jabbed her finger at him.

I shook my head. “Can’t be; he died at the Battle of Hogwarts. I have the photos that he took at the battle in my office.”

“I’m sure it was him,” she said simply. “Does he have a brother or an uncle?”

“Yeah, he should be in the picture.” I pushed Colin aside with my wand and Dennis was hiding behind him. Gabrielle gasped when she saw him. She picked the photo up and just stared at him.

I stood up and went to grab our case files again while she looked at Dennis and Colin. I threw down the photos of the crime scenes. She had seen them before but still flinched away from the dead children.

“Dennis works as a contract photographer for the Auror office and he took the crime scene photos. He looks a lot like his brother.”

“Mon Dieu,” she whispered. “I think he might be the one. It all fits. He’s the right age; he lost a family member; he’s inserted himself into the investigation; he probably has a copy of the photos as trophies.”

She turned to me. “Did he try to become an Auror?”

I nodded. “His spellwork was fine, but he didn’t have the Potions work needed and Ritter rejected him; he offered Dennis a position as a Hit Wizard, but after finishing the training, Dennis decided he didn’t want to do it. When I last saw him, he was good, but not as competent as it sounds like the person you fought was.”

“I am sure,” she said simply. “Do you know what kind of wand he uses?”

I shook my head. “No, but I can get that information from Ritter; hold on.” I wrote a note on a piece of parchment requesting Dennis’s file and Disapparated it to Ritter’s office.

“Why not use your Patronus?” she asked.

“If it is Dennis, he’s a contractor for our office and I don’t want anyone who happens to be there to overhear.”

She nodded. “Good idea.”

A few minutes later, a slim folder landed on the safe Apparition spot we had designated for work files and I retrieved it. There was a sticky note on it in Ritter’s handwriting ‘Dennis Creevey, DEC suspect?’

I motioned Gabrielle to follow me and we sat at the kitchen table and went through the file.

“Says here that his wand is mahogany with unicorn hair core,” I said.

“But look, everything else fits and he was out of the country during the period that the attacks stopped. Do you know where he was?” She flipped through the folder trying to find out.

I racked my memory. “I think he went to America? Something about attending a special photography school?”

I found the page before she did.

“Yeah, it says here that he was on a trade program with the American Aurors learning new forensic photography techniques and…” I trailed off.

“What?” she said, snatching the paper away from me.

She scanned through it quickly and read directly from the report.

_ “Dennis requested to be trained in advanced self-protection techniques and since he showed promise, was allowed to audit the advanced Auror training classes. DMLE will cover the costs associated with this as a job-related expense.” _

Her voice went quiet.

The kitchen door opened and both of our wands shot to our hands immediately.

Luna stepped in, saw the wands pointed at her and raised her hands.

“When the girls were born, the first thing I said was, ‘they have your hair,’ because they both had downy black hair.”

I nodded and lowered my arm. Gabrielle swept up the papers and put them away.

“You didn’t tell me you were coming,” I said more sternly than I meant.

“I never needed to in the past,” Luna said. She pulled two books out of her magic purse.

“I thought the girls would want their new copies of Fantastic Beasts right away from the publisher. Sorry I interrupted official Auror business.” She laughed.

“I’m not an Auror,” Gabrielle said.

“Please,” Luna said, “I figured out you were an Auror a few weeks ago. Pandora did too, and asked me how long I had known and that means Lily likely knows now, too, from Pandora.”

“You can’t tell anyone, okay?” Gabrielle said. “It’s very important.”

“Of course,” Luna said.

She pointed at the visible sticky note on the folder. “Dennis makes a lot of sense as the DEC Killer.”

“Well fuck!” I said, sitting down heavily.

“Seriously, you shouldn’t be here now.” Gabrielle stood, I think in an attempt to intimidate Luna or use body language to get her to leave. I knew that would be futile.

“I know how upset he was at losing Colin, and he has to fit a profile for this.” Luna helped herself to some coffee.

Gabrielle sighed and sat down. “But his wand doesn’t fit what was used; it’s mahogany and unicorn horn.”

“Oh, you know what wand the killer used?” Luna asked.

I met Gabrielle’s eyes and she shrugged as if to say, ‘go ahead if you trust her.’

“Blackthorn with dragon heartstring,” I told Luna.

“That’s Colin’s old wand. Maybe Dennis still has it?”

“You remember what type of wand Colin had?” Gabrielle asked.

“I remember everyone’s wand from the DA.” Luna smiled. “Would you like me to list them off?”

I shook my head. I knew better than to doubt Luna’s memories.

“Wait,” I said, “I thought Pandora was with you?”

Luna shook her head. “No, she said she was going to be home today and that Lily was at Justine’s.”

I pulled out my wand and summoned my Patronus.

“Let me know you’re safe and where you are. NOW!”

I sent it off to Pandora; it would find her wherever she was.

A few seconds later, my Muggle mobile buzzed.

_ Am at Van’s. Am okay. _

I sent back:

_ You’re in big fucking trouble. Wait for one of us to come get you. _

I knew where Van’s family lived and so did Luna and Gabrielle.

“Luna, you go get Lily and bring her here, I’ll go get Pandora.”

“Wait,” Gabrielle said. “I’ll go get Lily and Luna can get Pandora. You can go to Ritter and update him.”

“Okay.” Gabrielle Disapparated to go get Lily.

Luna kissed me on the cheek and left a moment later. I turned and reappeared just outside the Ministry. As I rushed through the building to Ritter’s office, Luna’s Hare Patronus appeared next to me.

_ “Lily home safe and Justine came with her. She knows something is up. Pandora just showed up with her escort, too. I will talk with her about lying.” _

I got a few funny looks at the talking Patronus keeping pace with me as I ran.

Ritter was waiting for me in his office. As I went in, he frosted his glass and cast  _ Muffliato. _

“It is Dennis Creevey,” I told him. “Gabrielle is sure that he was the man she fought at Malfoy’s villa. His brother, Colin, was killed at the Battle of Hogwarts and he has access to the investigation and training. Also, we think he’s using Colin’s old wand, which fits the profile.”

“Dennis, I never would have believed it. Bring him in.” Ritter sighed, then handed me a scroll with his seal on it.

“This authorizes you to use any force necessary, up to and including Unforgiveables, and to deputize any person you need.”

I blinked. Those powers hadn’t been used since the days right after the Battle of Hogwarts.

“But, try to take him in live. I have this waiting for him.” He opened his drawer and put a vial on it. I knew it was Veritaserum.

“Who approved this?” I asked.

“I have discretionary approval as Head Auror for this, and if there’s any fallout, then it falls on me, okay?”

I nodded, and turned to Apparate home when a falcon Patronus appeared.

“I have Violet,” it said in Dennis’s voice. “If you want to see her alive again, you have one hour to bring me Scorpius Malfoy. I don’t want to kill her; she hasn’t done anything, but I will if I have to. One hour. No tricks or she dies.”

“How’d he know we were onto him?” I asked.

“Someone must have seen me get his file and tipped him off.” He rose from his desk and I followed him from his office to the main Auror one.

“All right!” he bellowed. “Who contacted Dennis Creevey; speak up now!”

Jacobsen stood. “I saw you pulled his file and thought he’d finally been accepted as an Auror, so I gave him a heads-up.”

“Dennis Creevey is the DEC killer and now he has a hostage. Go, Harry, do what you need to, but under no circumstances are you to give him Scorpius Malfoy, got it?”

As I left, he was yelling orders.

“I need a half-kilometer anti-Apparition ward there now; a team of five setting a perimeter. When Harry arrives he’s in charge.”

I Apparated away as they scrambled.

I appeared outside Malfoy Manor. I deactivated the wards that we had magically hacked while they were in France and ran across the grounds to the door. I didn’t knock and ripped open the front door.

“Draco!” I yelled. “I need you now!”

Lucius came through a door, his wand out.

“You do not have permission to be here, Potter.”

I flicked my wand and stunned him before he had a chance to react.

Draco came down the steps a moment later, with Astoria peeking around a corner at the top of the stairs.

“You better have a good reason for attacking my father in our own home.”

“Dennis Creevey is the DEC killer and he’s demanding I bring him Scorpius or he’ll kill his hostage.”

He blinked and his face hardened.

“You’re not taking Scorpius to be murdered.”

“Of course, not. I want you to come instead.” I held up a potion bottle and understood immediately.

“Polyjuice potion?”

I nodded.

“This is your chance for revenge. I want him alive, but I’m authorized to use Unforgiveables if needed and I can deputize that on others. You’re so deputized. I don’t think my partner could imitate Scorpius well enough to pull it off.”

“Astoria, bring me one of Scorpius’s hairs.”

She moved stiffly as if she’d been ill, and Draco saw me notice. 

“She has a blood curse, there’s nothing they can do.”

“I’m sorry. I didn’t know.”

She came back in a moment with a small hank of light-blond hair in her hand and Draco ran up the stairs to get it. He kissed her briefly and then ran back to me.

“Let’s go, Potter.” I put the hair in the potion and he drank it.

I grabbed him and we Apparated outside the anti-Apparition ward the Aurors had set up around Dennis’s house. Gabrielle was there waiting.

“She wouldn’t leave, Harry,” Donalson told me.

I looked at her and she nodded.

“Gabrielle is a French Auror and my partner on this case, she broke up the  _ artefacts diaboliques  _ ring and she’s the one who stopped the attack on Scorpius in France.”

Draco as Scorpius eyed her.

“Thank you,” he said.

“I can’t believe you brought Scorpius.” She poked me with her wand.

“This is Draco under Polyjuice.” I pointed at him and he nodded.

“Good call. What’s the play?”

I told them. Donalson objected, but I was senior and it was my op.


	18. Interlude the Third--Harry--Summer before Year 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Harry attempts to rescue Violet from the DEC killer with Draco Polyjuiced as Scorpius and Gabrielle as backup.

I walked with Draco (Polyjuiced as Scorpius) by my side. We passed over the no-Apparition line and now there was no turning back. It was a short walk to the house where Dennis had Violet hostage. Gabrielle was going in a back way, using my Invisibility Cloak. The other Aurors were following standard procedure and taking up defensive positions around Dennis's house. He knew our protocols and would be able to see we were following them. I was sure he'd think there was a trick, but I didn't think he'd be expecting Gabrielle.

Draco and I approached the door. I glanced behind to make sure he was doing okay and noticed he was looking around fearfully. I wondered how much of it was acting and how much of it was Draco actually being afraid.

Before we got to the door, it opened and a wand poked out. Draco and I stopped.

"I want you to send Scorpius in alone." Dennis's voice came.

"You know that's not going to happen. I go in with him or we just launch an assault now and take our chances." I pushed Draco behind me.

"Yeah, I had to try though. Put this balm on him; it'll show me if he's someone else with a Charm or under Polyjuice potion." A foot pushed a vial out the door. I had been expecting this.

I stepped forward and took the vial while the wand behind the door tracked me. While I was walking back to Draco, I took out a vial I had in the secret pocket in my sleeve and put the one Dennis gave me in it. It would look and smell like the Discovery balm he'd given, but it was inert.

I opened the vial and the smell of cardamom and anise rose strongly on the slight breeze. I knew that Dennis could smell it too. I spread the contents on Draco's face and hands, and waited a few seconds. If the potion had been real, Draco would be changing back now.

"All right, come in," Dennis said from behind the door.

"Where's Violet?" I asked, coming through the door first. Dennis held out his hand. I put my wand in it.

"The wand that defeated Voldemort," he said, admiring it. Then he waved it at me, "Accio wand." A second wand that I had borrowed from Donalson flew out from my pocket. He put them both in a pocket of his robes.

"Really, so by the book, Harry. I'm a bit disappointed." He pointed at the wall and I spread-eagled myself against it and let him search me. He found all the things I had hidden on myself to let him find: a blistering gas; another wand (borrowed from Atkinson); a blood restorative draught, some Peruvian instant darkness powder; and an unmarked potion bottle to make him wonder what it was. He didn't find the hidden pocket in my sleeve or its contents. Hermione had charmed that long ago and the Charm that hid it was very, very good.

He motioned Draco in and Draco also spread against the wall. Dennis took Scorpius's wand from him and looked at it. Then he snapped it in half.

"But," Draco cried. Dennis cuffed him hard against his head.

Draco cowered. I could see his eyes but Dennis couldn't from where he stood. I had never seen Draco appear so actually murderous, not even when I faced off against him in the bathroom in sixth year and it looked odd coming from Scorpius's face. If we ever got the drop on him, Draco would probably kill Dennis. This was very different from when the Death Eaters were egging Draco to kill Dumbledore on the tower.

"Violet," I said again.

"That way," Dennis flipped his wand toward a doorway. As he did, I saw a picture of Colin on the wall, with hooks below it to hold his wand. It was empty, as the blackthorn wand was in Dennis's hand.

We preceded him into a comfortable sitting room. Violet was tied to a rocking chair, with what I recognized as conjured ropes. She met my eyes and I could see relief pass over them. She knew I was here to try to rescue her.

Dennis pointed to a matching rocker on the other side of the overstuffed couch. Draco sat on it and Dennis conjured ropes around him too.

"I didn't really think you'd bring Scorpius, you know? I thought for sure you'd try to just mount an assault and I'd have to kill poor, sweet Violet."

He patted her shoulder and tears started flowing from her eyes.

"I thought about killing her anyway, since her Muggle father was so bad to you, but I knew I'd have no leverage then."

He turned to me.

"I don't understand why you didn't do this." He jabbed at me with Colin's wand.

"What? Kill innocent children?" I asked, goading him. Hopefully, he'd make a mistake.

He slashed his wand at me and I gasped in pain as it slashed my face open. Blood poured into my left eye and I blinked to try to clear it.

"No! If you had done your job and killed their parents, then I wouldn't have to visit vengeance upon the flesh of their flesh!" He slashed me again and a deep cut opened on my wrist. This time the blood pumping was alarming. I grabbed my left wrist with my right hand and tried to slow the flow of the blood, but I was starting to grey out. I hoped Gabrielle was quick.

"No dying, Harry. No dying until you see Scorpius die." He partially closed the wound on my wrist with his wand and I watched numbly.

He raised his wand to Draco's face. _"Avada Ked--"_

He crashed to the ground with Violet on top of him. She had pitched forward in the rocking chair and knocked him over. Colin's wand skittered across the floor from him and Draco tried to kick it away, but couldn't reach. I leaned over and tried to grab it. My fingers couldn't quite grasp it. I overextended, and toppled off the couch and banged my head on the floor.

Dennis pushed Violet off him and scampered to Colin's wand. Gabrielle's hand came out from under the Invisibility cloak and she flicked her wand at Dennis. He must have heard her because he rolled away and her Stunner just missed him. I rolled over on my back and caught Draco's eye. I couldn't see the fight for a moment, but could hear both Gabrielle and Dennis firing hexes.

Draco copied Violet, tilted forward in his chair and landed painfully on me.

"Knife," he whispered.

I reached my hand back into my sleeve, into the hidden compartment and grabbed what I thought was a knife, but it was Draco's wand instead. I slid it to him, but his hand was still pinned by the ropes. I tucked it into his hand the best I could and he nodded at me.

A pained sound came from Gabrielle and I saw her crumple, still partially hidden by my cloak. Dennis rushed to Violet and grabbed her up, rocking chair and all. He had welts on his face and hand, and I knew he wouldn't be conscious much longer.

 _"Avada--"_ Dennis started, but Draco had been waiting for Dennis to get in his line of fire.

_"Sectumsempra!"_

Draco couldn't make the proper slashing motion, but still cuts appeared on Dennis's arms and chest. He almost dropped his wand, but didn't. Blood started to seep through his robes.

He dropped Violet and she crashed to the ground. This time he pointed his wand at Draco.

"I'll kill you!" he shrieked. Then Gabrielle's curse hit him and he froze.

 _"Sectumsempra!"_ Draco shouted again and this time the cuts were deeper. Dennis pitched over on top of me, his blood mingling with mine as we lay there.

 _"Sectumsempra,"_ Draco cried again, now sobbing. I felt more blood covering me and then pain as Dittany was poured over my cuts. I knew it wouldn't close up the wounds altogether, but it would slow the bleeding. I sat up and Gabrielle took Draco's wand from him. She freed Draco and then checked on Violet.

Draco dug through Dennis's pockets, got the blood restorative draught and made me drink some of it. I drank about half and then pushed it away.

"Give the rest to Dennis," I told him.

"I should just let him die," Draco whispered, tears falling down Scorpius's face.

"There's been enough killing. You didn't want to kill Dumbledore and I don't think you really want to kill Dennis, either." I coughed.

Gabrielle had freed Violet and revived her. Violet sat up and looked around blearily.

Draco dumped the rest of the draught into Dennis's mouth, then moved to sit beside Violet and held her.

"Scorpius?" she asked.

"No, I'm his father in disguise."

She sobbed into his shoulder while Gabrielle sang the _Vulnera Sanentur,_ to Dennis to stop his bleeding. It was the same eerie song that Professor Snape had sung to heal Draco all those years ago . I wouldn't be sad if he died, but I didn't want Draco to have to live with having killed someone, even someone as vile as the DEC killer.

There was noise from the rest of the house as my Auror team made their entrance. They took over the ministrations to Dennis and sent me, Draco, and Violet to St Mungo's.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thank you to Noelle Zingarella @HPFT for looking over this chapter for me. Her suggestions have greatly helped the flow of this. Please join us at hpfanfictalk dot com. We're a very friendly community.
> 
> Also, I know now for sure that there will be 22 chapters. 3 more chapters to wrap-up and one special epilogue chapter.


	19. Pandora--Summer before Year 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Aftermath. OWLs results. Discussions of the future.

Gabrielle's flamingo Patronus appeared and started speaking.

_ “Harry at St Mungo’s. Going to be okay, just lost a lot of blood.” _

“Of course,” Mum mumbled.

_ “Dennis Creevey is the DEC killer and has been caught.” _

I gasped and Lily put her hand over her mouth in shock. Justine wrapped Lily in a big hug. I felt suddenly upset that Van wasn’t here, too.

Gabrielle’s Patronus continued.

_ “Violet Dursley hurt in the assault and is at St Mungo’s; but should also be fine.” _

“I’ll contact Dudley,” I said and pulled out my mobile to text him.

_ Violet at St Mungo’s Hospital. Has been attacked. Will be fine. You home? _

_ “Please come ASAP, bring Dudley if possible.” _

Her Patronus disappeared.

“Wait here.” Mum ran to Dad’s bedroom and came back a few seconds later with what looked like an old-style flip phone, but I knew it was an emergency Portkey to St Mungo’s because Dad had told us how to use it in case of an emergency.

My mobile buzzed.

_ Home. What happ? _

I texted back.

_ Dunno. Stay there, we coming for you. _

“Is Dudley at home?” Mum asked. It was scary to see her all business. I had an idea now what she must have been like in the war.

I nodded. She handed the flip-phone/Portkey to Lily.

“Hold hands, then push the button; it will take you to St Mungo’s, okay?”

Lily nodded. Justine was holding her hand already, anyway.

Lily and Justine both nodded; Lily hugged Mum briefly, then she pushed the button and she and Justine disappeared with a pop.

“Have you been to Dudley’s before?” Mum asked. I think she already knew the answer.

“Yeah, I’ve visited Violet a few times. Dad always took me.” I took Mum’s hand.

“I’m going to Apparate there with your mental picture, make sure to picture it exactly and let me know when you have it.” She gripped my hand more tightly.

I closed my eyes and pictured Dudley and Violet’s council flat. The dingy khaki carpeting in the hallway and the scratched doors. The odor of the cat box and the worn, but comfortable furniture.

“Got it?” Mum asked.

I nodded. She gripped me tightly and we Apparated there; it hurt more to Apparate with Mum than with Dad and I wondered for a second if it had to do with practice, but then I brought my focus back.

“Dudley!” I shouted.

He ran out of Violet’s room with a purple bag with pink unicorns on it and nodded.

“What did you tell Violet when you came here first?” he asked.

“I said that I loved the view of the park out her window.”

He nodded.

“Let’s go,” he said and grabbed Mum’s arm.

“Have you ever Apparated before?” I asked him.

He shook his head.

“It’ll hurt; you’ll feel squeezed and twisted. Whatever happens, don’t let go or we’ll have to put you back together, okay?”

He gulped and I grabbed his other hand while he held onto Mum.

She Disapparated us to St Mungo’s. We appeared in a designated spot off the entry hall for Appartion. Dudley let go and immediately vomited in a bin in the corner.

We went into the entry area and started to wait in line for the Welcome Witch, when I saw my dad’s boss, Mr Ritter walk toward us. He’d obviously been waiting.

“How’s dad?” I asked.

We stepped out of the line and started to follow him.

“He’ll be fine; blood loss and a bump on the head.”

He knelt in front of me, like I was a small child.

“I promise.”

“Fuck off; I’m not six.”

“Pandora!” Mum shouted.

I crossed my arms. “Just take us to him.”

He stood and we followed him again. Dudley stared around wide-eyed at the hospital.

“How is Violet?” Dudley asked.

Ritter acted like he saw Dudley for the first time. “Are you the father?”

“Yes.”

“She’s got bruises and she’s been shaken up; physically she should be fine.” Mr Ritter sighed.

“But?” Dudley asked.

“But, I don’t know. She was held hostage and threatened by someone she looked up to. I don’t know how her recovery will be.”

Mum put her hand on Dudley’s arm and squeezed.

“If she’s like Harry and you at all, she’ll be fine; it’ll just take time. I can talk to her if she wants, too. I was taken by Death Eaters and tortured during the war so I understand.”

My eyes widened. Mum had never told me or Lily that story before.

She saw my reaction.

“I’ll tell you about it, too. It’s time you heard about Malfoy Manor and what happened there. It’s how your godmother got her scar.”

I’d seen the ‘mudblood’ scar on Hermione’s arm and shuddered. I’d always been afraid to ask.

We got to Dad’s room and he was sleeping. Mr Ritter told Dudley to follow him and they both left. I pulled out an enchanted pad of paper and wrote,  _ “how is Violet?” _

“Talking with Lily?” Mum asked.

“Yeah,” I said as Lily’s handwriting appeared. Lily had made these last year. NEWT level Charms work, but that was her specialty.

_ “Sleeping. Dudley just got here with Ritter.” _

“Dudley’s there now, and Violet’s sleeping.”

_ “She is pale and has some bruises on her head and wrist. How’s dad?” _

_ “Also sleeping. He looks the same as Violet, I guess. Hold on, he’s waking up.” _

Dad stirred, groaned and grabbed at the rail on the side of the bed. Mum grabbed his hand and held it.

His eyes opened and he blinked, obviously confused.

“Hi,” he said to Mum.

I stood and rushed to the other side and took his other hand.

“Daddy,” I said and started to cry. He lifted his hand and stroked my hair. I didn’t mind him treating me like I was younger; he was my dad and Mr Ritter was just his boss.

“I’ll be fine; I’ve been hurt much worse than this before.” He laughed. “I’ve even died once.”

I could tell he was serious and knew he’d probably tell me about that sometime soon.

“How’s Violet?” he asked sitting up.

Mum adjusted the bed so he could sit up correctly. I just held onto his hand.

“Ralph says she’ll be fine physically, but he’s worried about mentally,” Mum answered. It took me a second to realize that Ralph meant Mr Ritter; I don’t think I’d ever heard his first name before.

“Lily’s with her and she says that Violet looks roughed up like you.”

Dad nodded and we all spoke quietly for a few minutes until Lily and Justine came in.

“Dudley is with Violet, so we came back here,” Justine said.

Lily ran to stand with Mum on the other side of Dad from me and she hugged him.

“She’ll be okay, she’ll be okay,” Lily whispered more to herself than Dad, I thought.

The Healers came by a bit later and cleared Dad to go home. Mum Apparated him home, came back for us, then she went back to St Mungo’s to check on Violet.

Dad was already in his bed asleep when we got there.I fell asleep on one end of the couch while Lily and Justine huddled together at the other end. None of us heard Mum leave.

When I woke up to the sound of Gabrielle Apparating, it was dark. From the way Lily and Justine reacted, they’d fallen asleep on each other, too.

“How is he?” Gabrielle asked.

“He’s been sleeping since we got home,” Lily said.

“I’m going to check on him, get a shower and some food. I’ll fill you in on all the details in the morning..” She started to walk away.

“Wait!” I shouted. “What about Violet?”

Gabrielle sighed and turned back to us.

“She seems to be okay and she went home with her father and Luna went with them. I want to say she’ll be fine, but I think that would be a lie. I think this is going to be with her a long time.”

“Then we’ll be there for her,” Lily said. Justine squeezed her hand.

“We’ll be there for her,” I echoed.

Gabrielle went to check on Dad. I went to bed and saw Lily and Justine head to Lily’s bedroom together. Justine would be a good comfort to Lily. I missed Van again, or still, I wasn’t sure which.

Even though it was late, I texted Violet.  _ “Here any time you want to talk, as is Lily.” _

I figured she’d be asleep and didn’t expect an immediate response, but a few seconds later, I got one.

_ “thank you. tomorrow?” _

_ “If Mum or Dad can’t bring us, I’ll ask Gabrielle, and if that doesn’t work, then I’ll bug my dad’s boss until he sends someone to take me” _

_ “thanks” _

There was a pause, then,

_ “love you and Lily” _

_ “we love you, too,”  _ I texted back.

_ “night” _

_ “goodnight” _

“I’m off to bed,” Lily said. She got up and Justine followed her to her room. I wished that Van had a Muggle mobile phone so I could text him. I settled for writing him a letter about what had happened. The sky in the kitchen window was beginning to glow red with false dawn before I finished and went to bed.

I woke up late the next day and dad was in the living room talking with Gabrielle and Ritter.

“Good morning.” Dad started to get up to hug me, but I just hugged him over the chair.

“Lily?” I asked.

“Your mum took her and Justine to visit Violet and Dudley. When we’re done here, I’ll take you, too, if you like.”

“I’d like that. Could we stop at Van’s first, so I could talk with him?”

“I--guess so?” he asked.

“Five minutes, I promise. I just want to see him and give him a letter.”

Dad rubbed a weary hand over his eyes. Gabrielle noticed.

“I’ll take her, Harry. You should get some more rest. Have Ron and Hermione come over; you know they’ll both want to know how you are.”

Dad nodded. “All right.”

I went to shower. I picked out jeans and a plain black T-shirt and thought for a moment that it was something that Dad would have worn. That made me smile.

I passed through the living room on my way to the kitchen to eat. When I did, they paused their conversation and when I got to the kitchen it resumed. I took my time eating and then went to my room.

About an hour later, I heard the pop of someone Apparating away. Gabrielle knocked on my door.

“Before we go, I’ll tell you what happened yesterday. I already filled Lily in this morning before she went to Dudley and Violet’s.”

It only took a few minutes to tell us what happened. I thought it was both brave and stupid of my dad and Draco to be bait and delay Dennis until Gabrielle arrived.

When she was done, I closed my eyes and thought for a while, the voices in my head chasing each other around for a bit. When I had straightened out my thoughts, I opened my eyes. Gabrielle had been watching me patiently the whole time. It was the first time that I felt like she was looking at me like she loved me and didn’t just care about me as Harry’s child.

“Ready?” she asked.

“Ready,” I said and got up. I almost forgot the letter I had written the night before.

She took me to Van’s and waited in the hall while I gave Van the letter.

“We need to set up some way to communicate; why won’t you get a mobile?” I sighed.

He barked a short laugh. “My dad would never spend money on that. But, I should get my first cheque from the Wanderers soon and I’ll buy one myself, okay?”

I hugged him tightly. “Hey, I love you. Keep safe out there. What happened yesterday made me think of that.”

He pushed me back to arms length. “What happened?”

“Dad caught the DEC killer; he had Violet hostage and Dad rescued her.” I left out that Gabrielle had been there and done most of the rescuing and that Dennis Creevey is the DEC killer since I didn’t think that was public yet.

“Violet and Dad are okay, the DEC killer is caught. I put everything important in the letter. I’ve got to go to Violet now, all right?”

He pulled me back in and kissed me. We held the hug a long time before I pulled away reluctantly. The next two years at Hogwarts were going to be tough without him.

When we got to Violet’s place, Dudley was sitting at the kitchen table with a half-finished cup of coffee.

“They’re in her bedroom,” he said and waved.

Gabrielle sat down across from him and put out her hands over the table. Dudley took them and started to shake. Gabrielle caught my eye and I got her meaning. I left to go to the bedroom and could hear her talking softly with Dudley.

I knocked once and opened the door. Voices stopped as I went in. They had built a fort out of blankets and chairs.

“It’s me,” I said as I lifted the worn blanket and got under it with them. It was warm under there.

Lily was sitting in front of Justine, leaning back into her and Violet was stretched out on the floor with a pillow under her and a thin top-sheet over her. I could see she was in pyjamas under it.

“Pandora!” She sat up and hugged me awkwardly and I closed the blanket behind me.

“You’re probably tired of this, but I’ve got to ask; how are you doing?” I sat down and let her lean up on me.

“I--honestly, I’m not sure.” She laughed. “I’m barely hurt any more, and I think I’m done crying, at least for now.”

“I can’t believe it was Mr Creevey. He always seemed so nice.” Justine had her head down in Lily’s hair.

“Yeah, Gabrielle told me more about it this morning, but maybe I shouldn’t say.” I looked at Violet out of the corner of my eye and she noticed.

“Fuck that,” she said, mimicking me. I snorted.

“If you think I’m too young, then remember that a killer was holding me hostage.”

I met Lily’s eyes and she nodded.

Then I told them everything that Gabrielle had told me.

  
  
  
  


Two weeks later, we got our OWLs results.

Lily got the seven she was expecting, an O in Charms and Herbology; an E in Astronomy, Defence, and Care of Magical Creatures; and an A in History of Magic, and Transfiguration. She got a P in Potions, but was particularly fussed by it, since she wasn’t going to pursue it even if she had received an OWL in it.

I got an O in Potions, Defence, Care of Magical Creatures, Transfiguration; an E in Charms, Astronomy, Arithmancy, Herbology, and History of Magic; and an A in Ancient Runes.

“So, still thinking that you’ll drop out in a few months?” I asked Lily after she had read me her scores..

“I still haven’t decided. I’m kind of waiting on hearing back from Cho and getting her opinion.”

“Van says he’s going to be reserved this year and he doesn’t think he’ll get any in match experience, but that they’re happy with his performance. He also told me that we’re better than their number 2 and number 3 Chasers.” I punched her lightly on the shoulder.

“He’s just trying to get into your pants,” she said dodging back from a slightly hard punch from me.

“Yeah, and if you do go pro, then you won’t be able to get in Justine’s.”

Her face went serious for a moment and she sat down.

“You know, we haven’t done that yet.” She sighed.

I sat down next to her.

“I mean, neither have Van and I; we decided to wait, mostly because even though the age difference isn’t that much, it would look bad for a pro to be sleeping with a girl still in sixth year.”

Lily looked surprised.

“I thought you did on the last Hogsmeade trip last year.”

I shook my head. Van had been the one who stopped; I would have gone further.

“No, Van was pretty insistent about not doing it.”

“I want to and so does Justine, but something is holding me back.” She sniffled, holding back tears.

I put my arm around her.

“What do you think it is?”

She just shook her head, sniffled and stood. It was stubborn Lily-speak for “I’m not going to say until it becomes a fucking problem, then I’ll deal with it all at once.”

“What NEWTs are you going to do?” she asked, changing the damn subject.

“Charms, Potions, Arithmancy, Defence, Transfiguration, Care of Magical Creatures, and I’m going to ask to take Alchemy if there’s enough of us this year. You?”

She sat next to me again.

“Defence, Charms, Care of Magical Creatures and Herbology.”

I blinked.

“You’re only going to do four NEWTs?” I couldn’t keep the surprise out of my voice.

“It’ll give me more time to practice, and I’m pretty sure I’m going to be named Quidditch captain, too.” She looked at me in the eye.

“You’ll likely be the Ravenclaw captain, and Prefect. Do you think you’ll be able to do seven NEWTs in addition to all that? You’re going to be so tired.”

“I’ll get by; I always have.”

“So, you’re definitely not leaving school then?” she asked me.

I shook my head.

“I want those NEWTs; I want to prove it to myself.” I scrunched my face up a bit. “Also, there's a bit of wanting to make Mum and Dad proud of me, too.”

She leaned into me and put her head on my shoulder.

“I’m leaning toward staying in school. Being captain will be good for me in the long run, and also, I’d miss you and Justine and Sally...and Violet.”

“Look, I won’t say you should, but those sound like good reasons. No matter what you decide, Dad and Mum will be proud of you. Can you ever imagine Mum telling you to not follow your heart?”

“No. She’d never say that.”

“Lily! Pandora!” Dad yelled from his bedroom. “Got your results?”

“Yes!” I yelled back. Lily and I went to show him.


	20. Harry--Before Year 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Decisions are made on new career paths. A proposal. Harry reconnects with Dudley. Hogwarts letters arrive.

I trailed my hand down Gabrielle’s thigh and watched her skin goose-flesh at my touch. It was cool in the house with the windows and door to my--our bedroom open. The girls were off visiting Violet and we didn’t have to close and Muffliato the bedroom.

“Mmm, that’s nice,” she said sleepily.

“That’s what I was thinking,” I said.

She turned her head from where it had been buried in the pillow and smiled. “This has been one of the best summers of my life”

I leaned down to kiss her.

“Mine, too,” I said, “at least the part after almost being killed by a psychotic murderer...again.”

She crooked a finger at me and I lay back down next to her. This time when she lifted her lips for the kiss, it lasted much, much longer.

“Our leaves are almost over,” she said when she pulled back. “We have some decisions to make.”

“Yeah,” I said. “Ritter’s going to retire and he wants to make me Head Auror, but then you wouldn’t be able to transfer to the Auror corps because I’d be your boss.”

“How’d you know that’s what I wanted to do?” she asked, leaning up on her arms.

“I saw the application on Ritter’s desk and he talked to me about it. He wanted to make sure that I understood we couldn’t do both. There’s no rule about it, but the optics of the situation would be bad.”

I leaned up, too, so our faces were close.

“I don’t think I want the job anymore,” I told her.

She sat up completely and put her back against the headboard.

“What? But, you’ve worked so hard for it.” She sounded surprised.

“I have, but I’ve seen so much death over the years, so many evil people. I’ve paid my dues and I think it’s time I did something I want to do; something for me.”

I sat up next to her.

“I’ve been offered a job at Hogwarts; a new Chief of Castle Security position, and also NEWT level instructor for Defence Against the Dark Arts, since they’re adding more staff this year with the post-war baby boom continuing.”

“But that’s in Scotland; it’s so far away. What about the house? What about us?”

“There’s an opening for Head of the Scottish Auror division, and Ritter wants you to take it.”

Her eyes widened.

“Why am I just hearing about this now, when I’m naked?” She pushed a pillow into my face.

I shoved the pillow back at her and it devolved into a pillow fight for a few seconds.

“I wanted to be the one to ask you,” I told her. “We can get a place nearby within easy Apparating distance and when I’m not on live-in castle duty, we can stay there. I’d keep this house for the girls until they leave Hogwarts.”

She smiled. “Lily at least will be rich enough to have her own place when she goes pro, and probably Pandora will too, no matter what she does. I’ve never seen two more driven girls.” She paused. “Well, Fleur and I were like that too, I guess.”

“Won’t the Aurors there be jealous of an outsider with no seniority coming in and taking a position from one of them?” she asked doubtfully.

“They might, but I was treated pretty well when I joined…”

She cut me off.

“Yes, but you fucking killed Voldemort…”

I cut her off.

“And you caught the fucking DEC killer.” Ritter had made sure she got the lion’s share of the credit, even though the press tried to make me out to be the hero. She’d never be able to work undercover again.

“Besides, I know that MacVittie wants to go to London and he’ll be happy that someone else is going to be tapped for it besides him. Otherwise, there’s only one senior enough in that office to claim it and she’s not very diplomatic.”

“And I am?” she asked.

“Yes, when you need to be,” I told her.

“Look, just think about it. It means we’d be able to stay together, and I’d be doing something that finally makes me happy instead of just making me feel like I’m performing a duty that I have to.”

“Was being an Auror always like that for you?”

I shook my head.

“No, when I started, it was important and I felt...I don’t know, I guess ‘right’ would be the best word for how it felt, but it didn’t make me happy. Being with Luna made me happy, the girls made me happy, but work just made me feel content? Or maybe just a bit healed? I don’t know. I don’t think it was ever what I thought it would be. I’ve seen so much evil and the faces of the kids Dennis killed will haunt me maybe even more than the ones after the Battle of Hogwarts.”

She leaned in and kissed me gently.

“You’ve paid your dues and done your time; you deserve to be happy.”

“So do you,” I whispered and kissed her more eagerly.

We lost ourselves in each other again and then slept.

We woke up to the sound of owls outside the door. I put on a robe and got up to get the letters. I expected it would be Ritter demanding answers, but it was three Hogwarts letters, one for each of the girls and one for me.

I hefted Pandora’s first and it was heavier than mine was when I was named Quidditch captain, so it was going to be her Prefect badge, her letter and a Quidditch Captain badge.

Lily’s was lighter, but I felt a badge there, too, and I knew it would also be a Quidditch captain badge. I thought being captain and also wanting to be near Sally and Justine might be enough to keep her in school. I really wanted her to see it through, but if she decided to go pro, I couldn’t blame her. I think maybe I was projecting my wish to have done seventh year onto her, and that wasn’t fair either. It was her decision and I’d respect it either way, I hoped.

Mine was thin, and I knew what it was before opening it. It was going to be an official job offer for the Chief of Castle Security and Defence professor position. I slit it open and read it. The money was less than what I was making now, but not that much less, and more money than I needed anyway, so that was no concern. McGonagall wanted me for at least 7 years, but it said they’d take a five year contract.

I closed my eyes and I could picture Hogwarts. The classrooms, grounds, and friends on the staff there called to me. I would be good to work alongside Neville, Rubeus (as he insisted I call him now), and Minerva. It would be good to teach and see optimistic faces for once instead of death and dark wizards everywhere. I knew I was going to do this, no matter what Gabrielle decided. If she wanted to go to Scotland, we’d go on, but if she wanted to go back to France or stay in the London area, then we’d probably be done. I wanted her to come with me; it was more than just desire, I loved her like I’d only loved Luna before. It was a different love, more adult and sharing and less...needy, I guess. I think I needed Luna at the time I met her and it wasn’t the same with Gabrielle. It was more an equal partnership. Until that moment, I don’t think I’d realized just how much of herself Luna had given me.

I still had my eyes closed when Gabrielle walked into the kitchen. I didn’t open them as she came up behind me and hugged me tight from behind.

“Is that the job offer?”

I inhaled our mingled scents and kissed her hand before opening my eyes. I reached behind me and pulled her onto my lap.

“Yeah.” I kissed her and she returned it.

“I’m going to take it. I need to get out of the Auror’s office. I just can’t anymore. Hogwarts gave a lot to me; it was my home. Now it’s time for me to give back. Also, it’s for me. Hogwarts will give back to me, too.”

“I’ll understand if you don’t want to go to Scotland; if you want to go back to France and be closer to your family or stay in London and have a more traditional career path.”

She took my head in both her hands and held it in front of hers.

“I love you, Harry. If going to Scotland will keep us together, then let’s go to Scotland.” She pulled me in for a long, long kiss.

“I love you, too, Gabrielle,” I said when we surfaced.

“I want to build this together.”

“I want that, too, Harry...and your family is my family now. I can’t imagine leaving the girls either. I won’t say it’s like being their mother, or that it’s like being their sister, but maybe it’s more like just being there for them.”

She laughed.

“Though it’s not like they need it. Their mother is quite the woman; very, very strange, but a force to be reckoned with; and their godmother, well we know what she’s like. But if I can be a small part of their lives, too, then that’s good.”

“What about us? Do you want to get married someday? Have kids?” I asked.

“Married, hmmm, probably; are you asking? Kids of our own; probably not.”

“Yeah, let’s get married,” I said in a nonchalant voice that I knew would drive her crazy.

“Yeah, let’s,” she said in the same voice and then kissed me again. We could only kiss for a few seconds before we both started laughing so hard we couldn’t do anything else.

Later that night, I was working at the kitchen table, paying bills and going over accounts. Gabrielle was at Shell Cottage, visiting, and I was planning on going over later for drinks.

Lily came home first, she had gotten Justine’s mom to Apparate her home. She saw the letter on the table and tore it open. The Quidditch Captain badge dropped into her hand first and she just looked at it for a few seconds before she grabbed the letter and read it.

“Well, at least my supplies won’t be too expensive this year.” She handed me the letter like she was afraid I wouldn’t approve of her just taking four NEWTs.

I handed her my letter and she skimmed it.

“Are you going to do this?” she asked.

I nodded.

“I need the change. Sorry, I’m going to be Professor Potter to you and not Dad there, okay?”

She hugged me.

“It’ll be weird, but great; I miss you so much when I’m away at school.”

I read her letter, then she gave me back mine and I gave hers back.

“We both know that only your Charms NEWT makes any difference anyway, right? So why would I be angry that you’re only taking four?”

She put the letter back in its envelope.

“Mum won’t be upset?”

I laughed, and she looked like she was going to cry for a moment.

“No, Luna’s proud of you no matter what.” I hugged her. “Honestly, can you imagine your Mum being disappointed in you?”

She hugged me back.

“I suppose if I became a Death Eater or something like that…”

“But barring that?” I asked.

“Nah, I guess not.” She started to head to her bedroom then stopped and turned back to me.

“Wait, what about Gabrielle?” she asked.

“Oh, her,” I said nonchalantly. “She’s going to be the head of the Scottish Auror Branch. Oh, and we’re going to get married.”

She squealed,and ran to hug me. We talked for a few minutes more, then she went to her bedroom, probably to chat with Justine about everything.

Van dropped Pandora off a few minutes later and after they shared a long kiss, she also made a beeline for her letter just like Lily had. Van waved at me just before he Disapparated. I think he was intimidated by me, which always made me laugh, because he was so much taller and heavier than me.

“Prefect Badge, letter, Quidditch Captain badge,” I told her as she picked it up.

“Did you peek?” she asked, opening it.

“Nope, just hefted it. I know what a single badge feels like.” I fake-sobbed. “I wasn’t named Prefect and it’s haunted me all these years.”

She punched me in the arm, like she would Lily and laughed.

“Looks like you were right.” The two badges fell out into her hand. She read her letter and handed it to me. I read it over and handed it back.

“You’re also going to need another book; ‘How to deal with your father as a Professor.’”

“What?”

“I’m leaving the Aurors and going to Hogwarts as Chief of Security and NEWTs Defence professor, so I hope you’re going to be a good student.”

She stared at me.

“Are you serious?”

“No, he was my godfather.” God, I’d waited years to say that to Pandora.

“What?” she asked.

“What?” I repeated back at her in the same tone.

She blew a raspberry at me.

“Really, you’re going to teach?”

“Yep, I’m signing a seven-year contract.”

“What about Gabrielle, the house?”

“I’m going to keep the house at least until you two are done with school, then I’ll sell it. Gabrielle and I are going to get a place in Scotland; she’s going to be head of the Scottish Branch of the Aurors.”

“But…” she started to say.

“Oh, and we’re going to get married.”

“Eeeee!” she squealed and launched herself into my arms. It was almost exactly like Lily had done earlier.

“That’s great, Dad, she’s good for you.”

“And I love her,” I told her.

Pandora kissed me on the cheek.

“Wait until I tell Lily.” She started to head to Lily’s room.

“I already know!” Lily’s voice shouted from down the hall.

“Damn it!” Pandora shouted back. “You’re just a Hufflepuff, you’re not allowed to know anything before a Ravenclaw!”

There was silence for a second, then laughter from both of them. Lily sounded more like Luna with her big chuckles and Pandora was more like me with her longer, deeper laughs. I loved them so much in that moment; and Luna too, but that was a dull love and not the sharp insistent love it used to be.

A week later I was in Dudley’s flat while Violet was shopping for her Hogwarts stuff with Gabrielle and the girls. They were going to meet Justine and Sally there, and make a girls’ day out of it.

“So, first, I want to apologize for how I treated you as a kid,” Dudley said as we sat down.

“I--really, it’s not necessary,” I said.

“No, it really is. Making amends is one of the steps to recovery.” He looked me directly in the eyes.

“You’re not one of the ones I hurt when I was off my head on drugs and booze, but I hurt you in a different way. I was a bad person then, and I’m trying to be better now.”

He reached across the table and grabbed my arms.

“Also, thank you for saving Violet.”

I started to wave him off, but he tightened his grip and I stopped.

“Yeah, I know you say it was all Gabrielle, but I asked around, and they say you played bait so Gabrielle could get in there. It takes someone special for that.”

Tears spilled from his eyes, while I sat there shocked.

“If...if...I had lost Violet also, I think I would have probably done myself in. It would have been easy to find some heroin and just put the needle in and be done with it.”

“I’m sorry I wasn’t there for you when you were going through that,” I said.

He sniffled. “You had no reason to be there after the way my parents and I treated you.”

“Is that Violet’s Mum?” I pointed at a picture of a woman holding a baby in hospital.

He smirked. I think he knew I was trying to change the subject.

He picked up the picture and handed it to me.

“Yeah, that’s Niobe.” He laughed ruefully. “This may be the only picture I have of her when she was sober.”

“I’m sorry to hear that.”

He sighed. “It’s okay, I just wish she could stay clean. It’s hard, and she’s not succeeding. I’d help more, but having her in my life that way just makes me more likely to backslide and that wouldn’t be good for Violet.”

I handed him the photo back.

“How are your Mum and Dad?”

“Dad’s a bastard; fat and lazy; high blood pressure and he’s had two heart attacks.” He shook his head.

“That could have been me, too,” he whispered then got control of himself.

“Mum’s a saint for looking after him. He’s bad to her, but she loves him anyway. I don’t understand. I told her if she wanted to leave him, that I’d be there for her, but I don’t think she can.”

“I’ve seen a lot of those types of relationships as an Auror, and it’s always sad. Tell her I wish her the best.”

I was surprised to find out I meant it.

Dudley laughed. “Should I tell Dad that, too?”

“He can burn in Hell,” I said abruptly, then I felt my face redden.

“I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have said that.”

He laughed harder and then started cry-laughing.

“No, that’s about the size of it, and I kinda agree.”

I changed the subject again to his work and Violet and we had a good talk the rest of the way. I told him I’d look after Violet in school for the next few years and he gave me a big hug. It was awkward, but good.

I left with a promise to visit with him and Violet on holidays and I invited him to Christmas dinner at my place, whether or not it was going to be in Scotland or at my current place was up in the air. Or maybe I should take him to family dinner with the Weasleys at the Burrow. That would be an eye-opening experience for him.

September was coming quickly and I was splitting being in Hogwarts and getting my Security team, classroom, and office prepped and also being at home for the girls. Honestly, I probably could have just stayed in Scotland since the girls were always off at a friends or practicing. I think I was going to see them more at school this fall than I would have at home anyway.

Gabrielle and I had agreed on a place just outside Stirling. We’d thought about Hogsmeade, but there just wasn’t anyplace there that appealed to us. Stirling was close enough to her work in Edinburgh that it was an easy trip there. I’d be there less often, since I had to stay at Hogwarts most of the time when it was in session, but it was still within easy Apparating distance for me.

The house was small, only two bedrooms, a converted office and a kitchen/dining area, but it was going to be perfect for me and Gab. When Pandora saw it, she laughed and made a joke about making sure the fledglings were being kicked out of the nest.

And then, suddenly, it was September 1st. I saw the girls off at King’s Cross. Violet seemed like she was going to be okay. She had gotten rid of the camera that Dennis had given her and I’d bought her a new (used) one. I’d gone with her to the camera shop and the clerk seemed delighted that she was the one who knew what she wanted instead of the older man.

“She’s still interested in photography, then?” I asked Dudley after the train had gone.

“Even more, I think. She won’t talk about it much, but I think that she wants to show that there’s something good still in the world, and do it through photos.”

“Any word on Niobe?” I asked

“She’s still the same, last I heard.” He sighed.

I gave him a small compact. He opened it and looked curiously at the mirror inside it. “My mobile won’t work at Hogwarts, so if you need me, just tap on this three times with your finger and say my name. I can’t promise that I’ll respond right away, but I will see it and get back to you.”

“Thanks, Harry, it’s more than I deserve.” He stuck out his hand for me to shake.

I shook it and then gave him a firm half-hug.

“No, you deserve to be happy, too. You’re trying to maintain your change and it’s hard.”


	21. Lily--Year 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lily finalizes her decision whether to stay in school or go pro. She has a discussion about the future with Justine. Lily and Pandora make a pact.

It was good to be back at Hogwarts. Sally and I picked up where we had left off; I’d spent way more time with Justine this summer than I had with Justine and I felt bad, but Sally had been going out with Stephen Selwyn, so I guess she was busy, too.

When we had sat down at the table, Sally whispered to me.

“Why is your dad at the staff table?”

I just smiled and didn’t answer her. When he was introduced as the NEWTs Defence professor, there was dead silence for a second then thunderous applause. He stood and said a few words that I don’t remember and then sat back down.

There were a few more new faces at the staff table and it soon became apparent that they were adding staff as the student population increased. I thought about it and it made sense; it was just the right time after the war for the population to surge. I looked at the tables and there were definitely more students than there had been when we’d started.

Violet had sat on the other side of me to eat, then she got up and started circulating to take photos. No matter where she went, she was greeted as a friend. I watched as the Slytherins all gathered for a group photo. When they were done, Selwyn shook her hand and gave her a hug. Sally noticed, too and smiled. She and Stephen had a good thing going.

After the feast, in the Hufflepuff common room, the members from last year's Quidditch team approached me.

“What’s the plan this year?” Parkinson asked.

“Yeah, we know that you might go pro? Are you going to see out the year?” Singh asked.

“I hadn’t decided until I was on the train; I’m going to stay. We’re going to win the Cup again. I’ll set the tryouts date soon, and I expect you all to be there.”

Having finally said it out loud, I knew it was the right choice. I went into my dorm and got out my enchanted writing tablet and wrote to Justine.

_ “have decided, am staying this year and next. Going to get those NEWTs, stay with you. Love you.” _

It was only a few seconds before she typed back.

_ “love you too. glad you’ll be here xoxo” _

_ “xoxo” _

Sally came in a few minutes later and I let her know, too. She gave me a big hug and then I pressed her for all the details on her and Stephen.

I had a lot of free time with only four NEWT classes. I helped Madame Hooch with her flying lessons and got in a lot of extra practice time for Quidditch and Charms. I got to work one-on-one with Professor Flitwick and I learned so much from him.

But, the real eye-opener was Defence. Dad taught very differently than all the other professors. His classroom didn’t have desks or chairs, instead it was set up in a big circle with lots of comfortable pillows and bean bag chairs. It had battle dummies and a duelling circle. He first told the class about what happened in the war and how he used simple spells to defeat Lord Voldemort. He drilled us and made sure we had solid foundations first then taught us more advanced defensive spells. He didn’t leave out offense, though, like some of the professors had done before.

“You might have to know more than how to defend yourself. A good defence is sometimes taking it to your attacker yourself.”

When I did the tryouts, I was pleasantly surprised how much Violet had improved. She made the team at Seeker and we were solid at Chaser, but we were going to be weak at Beater with both Van and Frank gone.

When I saw the Ravenclaw tryouts, though, I knew we were going to have a hard time this year. Their Chasers, led by Dora, were almost as good as ours, but they were much better at Beater, and their Seeker was a returning player with three years experience.

There were more scouts in the stands this year at the tryouts than even last year. I thought they might try to approach me or Dora, but whatever McGonagall had told them last year had stopped them. My mind wandered a bit to the letter I got from Cho and the decision that Dora and I would have to make soon about getting an agent or agents. I assumed she wanted to sign with the same agent, but I hadn’t actually asked her about it.

Our practices confirmed my fears. Violet was good, but raw and untrained, and our two new Beaters were the same. I knew it would put pressure on me and the other two Chasers to try to just outscore our opponents by so much that it wouldn’t matter if Violet caught the Snitch or not. 

Gryffindor was our first game and we just squeaked it out, with Violet catching the Snitch a second before the Gryffindor Seeker. Justine told me after the match that she actually thought that Gryffindor had a chance against us this year. I laughed and she was a bit offended, but we made up quickly.

Our first Hogsmeade weekend was weird; Justine and I went together, and this time so did Sally and Stephen. Van had finished at Hogwarts and was playing professionally, so he wasn’t with Dora. Violet was a third year and finally able to go, and she walked with Dora some, but had friends her own age, so Dora was the odd one out. She got bored and went back to the castle early. When we got back, I could see her flying aimlessly around the Quidditch Pitch. By the time I got there, she was packing up for the night.

“Hey, sorry if it feels like we ditched you.” I hugged her.

“Yeah, but it’s okay.” She sat on a bench and patted the seat next to her.

“Two years ago, when I couldn’t go to Hogsmeade it was still good, because Van and I would use it as date time around the castle, and last year I could go with him. It just kind of hurts a bit to be so far from him. All I can think of is how Mum and Dad were so far apart and how that worked out for them.” She sighed.

“You’re not Mum, and Van’s not Dad,” I said. “If anyone two can make a go of it, it’s you two.”

“Yeah, I know, but it’s two more years of school, so it’s a long time. I miss him. He was warm, and smelled good.” She laughed.

“That’s pitiful,” I told her and punched her like we did. “Don’t you have something better to say about your boyfriend?”

She punched me back. “He’s a great kisser and he actually listens and understands. He’s afraid of Dad, which makes me laugh; I would have loved to see him in Dad’s class.”

“Dad’s class is great.” We had been learning more offensive spells lately and it was fun, but also scary to realize that there were so many ways to wound with a wand.

“Have you and Justine talked about after school?” she asked, changing the subject.

“A little,” I said, then gripped her hand.

“Let me guess, you’re avoiding talking about it, because you have a hard time talking about tough things.” She squeezed my hand. I tried to jerk it away, but she held it tight.

“You can’t avoid it forever, and the longer you put it off, the more it’ll hurt if something happens.”

I yanked my hand back, stood and walked off.

“Love, you Lily, but turning your back won’t help either.”

I kept walking. I went all around the lake, then it got too dark, so I went inside. I messaged Justine to meet me in our study classroom and she came a few minutes later.

I stood and greeted her with a kiss.

“Hey, what’s up?” We sat down next to each other.

“I don’t know.” I sighed. “No, I do know, but it’s hard for me.”

“You’re not breaking up with me are you?” she asked half-jokingly.

I shook my head. “No...”

She could hear the hesitation.

“But?” she asked.

“I--I was talking with Dora earlier about Van and she brought up how weird it was without him and it made me think about after school and us.” I grabbed both her hands and looked her in the eye.

“You know what I’m going to be doing after school, and I know you want to go to America and study there.” I paused.

“I do,” she said. “I want to learn about the indigenous cultures and it’s a chance to work with actual tribes and learn from them instead of just feeling like a tomb raider on the digs. They had ways of doing magic that were so different from what we do here and it’s arrogance to assume that our way is better.”

“What about us?” I asked in a small voice.

“What about us?” she repeated back.

I sighed again. “I mean we’ll have to decide if we want to go long-distance or break up at some point.”

She squeezed my hands and kissed me deeply.

“We have now; can that be good enough?” she asked when we came up for air.

I nodded and kissed her again, but I think part of me wondered if it was good enough. I wondered if that was what my Mum had said to my Dad.

A few weeks later, I watched with Sally and Justine as Ravenclaw destroyed Slytherin. We had Slytherin next and it looked like an easy win. I just hoped we could score as much as Ravenclaw did.

When that game came around, I had a cold and didn’t play well and Violet seemed distracted and anxious, and we actually lost a low-scoring game. Even with the loss, we were practically neck-and-neck with Ravenclaw, but we had played two matches, and they had only played one.

Then it was time for Christmas break. When we got back home, it was weird. Dad had moved a lot of his belongings to his and Gabrielle’s new place and it felt empty even though all of our stuff was still there. Kaiya always had to go around and mark everything whenever she came back home and I watched as she did this, tail-up and making small ‘merp’ noises.

Christmas at the Burrow that year was fun. Dad had brought Dudley and Violet and at first he seemed uncomfortable, but Ron made him feel at home, as did Nana Molly and Grampa Arthur. Whatever had gone before with Ron and Dudley seemed forgiven. Hermione had too much champagne, got red around the face and sang carols too loudly.

Mum and Rolf stopped by and it was one of the first times that I saw Dad hug Mum and it didn’t seem uncomfortable for him. Rolf had brought a Kneazle kitten with him that he was fostering and I thought the way that Fleur was fawning over it that it was likely to be adopted soon.

Dad spent a few days with us at the house and it was good to see him with Gabrielle. They moved in similar ways and I thought back to him and Mum and it was so different. Of course, I was only eight when they split, so my memories were likely colored by that.

The Ravenclaw-Gryffindor match was a bad one for our chances. Ravenclaw destroyed Gryffindor just like they did Slytherin and we were nearly four hundred points behind. It was practically impossible for us to win now, since we were playing Ravenclaw next and that meant we’d have to win by that margin and there was no way we would be able to hold Ravenclaw to such a low score while racking up a high score ourselves.

When we got back to school, Violet wanted to talk to me after practice.

“I wanted to talk to you about that last game, but I didn’t want to do it at Christmas.” She hung her head shyly.

“What about that last game?” I asked.

“We lost because I couldn’t focus and I didn’t have my head in the game. I should have caught the Snitch.” She sighed and sat on the ground.

I sat next to her.

“We lost that day, because we all played like shit.”

She started to say something, but I held up my hand.

“Yeah, you were distracted, I could tell. I was sick. Singh played like he forgot everything we did in practice. It wasn’t just you.”

I put my arm around her.

“You won’t catch the Snitch every game. We won’t win every game. We’re likely not going to win the Quidditch Cup this year. Sometimes it’s like that.”

I laughed.

“No one wants to win more than I do, believe me, and it took me a long time to get used to being driven. If you want to win, you’ll have to be driven. Maybe it won’t be Quidditch that drives you, maybe it’ll be photography or you’ll be an Auror, or a teacher. Whatever it is, that’s what you should do.”

I squeezed her to me.

“I know, but I still should have been focussed.” She squeezed me back.

“May I ask what distracted you?”

“It sounds stupid, but I saw someone in the stands with a camera, and thought for a moment that it was Mr Creevey, and then I just couldn’t shake that feeling. It was like I was living it all over again, even though I was there on the pitch, flying.”

She put her head on my shoulder and I felt tears.

“Dad has great contacts through the Aurors if you want or need someone to talk to about it. I can listen, too, but it’s out of my depth to help. But, I’ll always be here for you, and I know Dora will be too.”

“Thanks. Dad already asked Harry and I’ve been talking with a therapist there by mirror once a week. I don’t know if it’s helping or not, but Miss Grabow was an Auror and understands what I went through.”

She lifted her head, wiped her eyes, then met my gaze.

“I’ll get through it with my family. You’re my family.”

She hugged me again, stood and went off to the castle.

I sat there for a few minutes more and tried to re-prioritize my thoughts.

The Ravenclaw match came quickly and we played well. I could tell the team wanted to make a good showing after our Slytherin game debacle. We won a close game, but not by nearly enough to take the cup. We were going to be a distant second.

Dora played as good as I’d ever seen her and I knew it had to have increased her standing with most of the scouts in attendance.

A few days later, I caught up with Dora before study group.

“I’ve decided that I’m signing with Fister, Francken and Sloane,” I told her. “They were the ones most recommended by all the people I asked and Dad asked Mr Wood about them and he said they did him right when they repped him.”

She sat down.

“Yeah, they seem like the best choice. That’s probably who I’m going to go with, too. What do you think the odds are we’ll get signed to the same team?”

I see-sawed my hand.

“Not great, I think. The teams that need Chasers most don’t need two. I think it’s likely that I’ll end up at Portree or Montrose and you’ll probably go with Wigtown or Portree, but really that’s what our agent will be for, right?”

She sighed.

“Yeah, I know. I was hoping we’d play together as pros at some point.”

I sat next to her.

“Let’s make a deal. We’ll play together on the English team in the next cycle.”

Her eyes widened.

“You’ll play in the next cycle, but I don’t think I’ll be picked.”

“You’ll be picked if you try. You have the skills, you just need the drive.” I poked her in the chest.

She swatted my hand away.

“And if we haven’t played together as pros by the time we’re thirty-five, one of us will take a pay cut to join the other’s team, okay?”

She laughed.

“That sounds like that old thing about two school friends who decide that if they haven’t married by forty, that they’ll marry each other.”

I laughed with her and hugged her tightly.


	22. Luna--Year 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Luna has a couple of talks with Harry. Harry and Gabrielle's wedding. The final Ravenclaw/Hufflepuff match of their school years. Pandora is barely holding it together.

It was a beautiful summer day and I was going back to the home I used to share with Harry and the girls. I missed the gardens there, but I wouldn’t trade the fields and paddocks I had with Rolf for them.

There was a light on when I got there and I thought that maybe Pandora was studying instead of out practicing. I knew Lily wasn’t there; she was off with the English national team. She’d been named a junior member, which meant she could train with them and go with them on their trips, but wasn’t eligible to play. The coach wanted her to play, but Lily was now adamant to finish school. I had told her she didn’t need to prove anything to me or her father, but she seemed to want it for herself.

I think she really wanted more time with Justine and it was going to be hard for her when Justine left for America and Lily was left here in England, playing Quidditch. It made me think of Harry staying home with the girls while I was off adventuring. It was one of my few regrets in life; usually I believed that life was too short for regrets.

The garden was getting a bit wild and overgrown with Harry spending most of his time in Scotland now. Living at Hogwarts most of the year and with Gabrielle the rest of the year had improved his disposition so much. I was so happy he wasn’t an Auror anymore; that time of his life had passed and now he could do something for himself instead of for everyone else.

I didn’t knock and went through the door into the kitchen.

Harry’s voice came from farther in the house; he knew it was me from the way I’d bypassed the wards.

“Luna! I’m in here!”

I followed his voice and he was in our old bedroom packing something away from a closet. It was odd seeing our old bedroom stripped mostly bare.

“What brings you here?” he asked, straightening from his box. He came to me and hugged me.

“I wanted to leave a note for Lily. Rolf and I are leaving for Finland in a week and we won’t be back until February. I’d hoped Pandora would be here and I’d tell her in person.”

I pulled back and looked at the box he was packing. It was mostly photos and the girls’ drawings that he’d framed long ago.

“Just make sure you’re back by May,” he said, sitting on the floor.

I sat next to him and leaned our shoulders together. Years ago, it would have been intimate, now it was just friendly.

“Oh, that must be the wedding!” I kissed his cheek.

“What?” he asked. “How did you know?”

I laughed.

“After all this time, do you really think I can’t read you? I knew you and Gabrielle were perfect for each other as soon as I figured out she was an Auror and that you were working a case together.”

He put his arm around me and pulled me closer.

“Yeah, I think in ways we weren’t.”

He sighed.

“You were there so much for me in the early days and I took more than I gave…”

I turned his face to me.

“No, you gave as much as you took. You needed someone to love you, and be there for you and I needed love and acceptance. You and Ginny were the first people to treat me like a real person.”

“I miss her so much,” he whispered.

“I do, too. I loved her. In a different world, maybe you and she would have gotten married, or all three of us would have been together.”

His eyes widened. I don't think he’d ever thought about that.

“She loved you; she had since she was a child, but she didn’t want to come between us.”

“I never knew that.” His voice was hoarse. “I mean, I knew she loved me, but I thought it was just a crush, you know?”

“Yes, I know.”

He changed the subject abruptly and stood. I could see where Lily got that sometimes.

“You don’t mind that I’m selling the house? If you want it, I’ll deed it over to you.”

“No, its time has passed. It’s time for it to be someone else’s memory now.”

He went to get more of the girls’s pictures off the wall.

“What do you think of Lily and Pandora going to different teams?” He deftly removed the nail holding the picture up and caught the picture in his open hand and the nail in his wand hand.

“It’ll be good for them. It’s not like they were together at school anyway, so it’ll be like that. And, they’ll both be in Scotland near you and Gab, so that’s good.”

“Yeah, it was lucky that it was Wigtown and Portree that signed them.”

I shook my head.

“Not luck?” he asked.

“No, I’m sure Pandora took less money to go to Wigtown. I think that Puddlemere really wanted her.” I’d surprised him; he hadn’t thought of that.

“I...do you think she’d arrange that with her agent and not tell me?”

He met my eyes and laughed. I joined him. We both knew the answer to that was ‘yes.’

We sat there and talked for hours. It was both like old times and not, because I could tell that he really had finally moved on from what we’d had. We’d always love each other, but it wasn’t the same type as when we were together.

The trip to Finland went long and we didn’t get back until March. Rolf left pretty much immediately again to visit his grandparents. Tina wasn’t doing well lately, and Rolf wanted to make sure he had told her everything that needed to be said. If she died, I didn’t think Newt would survive her for long. She seemed to be his center in the way that Rolf was for me and that I wished Harry could have been, but that it looked like Gabrielle and Harry would be for each other.

I wrote a letter to each of the girls and a few days later, I got their replies. Lily seemed to be doing okay, but I could read between the lines and see she was really concerned about what was going to happen with her and Justine. I wrote back to her and made sure to tell her that the best way to get through it was to talk to Justine and not to avoid the subject.

Pandora’s letter was more serious. She was struggling with her Head Girl duties, Quidditch and school. She felt like she was burning the candle at four ends (her words). I wrote to her that she should focus on what was most important to her and that I loved her no matter what. She also seemed upset about something with Van, and I went to the Quidditch press to figure it out. Then I saw the photo of him surrounded by his fans, and also the photo of one of those fans leaving his hotel room early in the morning. Being the boyfriend of someone with a famous father made Van the target of paparazzi, too.

I gave her the same advice that I gave Lily; talk to him. I hoped it was something they could work out, but I wasn’t sure. Pandora wasn’t someone to take cheating lightly, and I thought it might be over. I wondered if they had discussed being open before Van left school, but I think that Pandora might not have been free enough to allow an open relationship like that. Then I realized that I was putting an open relationship on a higher plane than monogamy and rebuked myself. What was good for one person wasn’t necessarily what was right for another. Harry would never have accepted an open relationship when we were together, and I didn’t want that with Rolf, so I was being judgmental for no reason.

Both of the girls had also mentioned that they’d like to see me there for the Ravenclaw/Hufflepuff Quidditch match coming up in April, so I made sure to keep the day free.

That day in April was beautiful; sunny, but chilly. Harry greeted me at the castle gate and we walked through the school together before the match. He smiled more than I’d seen him smile in years. He showed me his classroom.

“It’s modelled after the Room of Requirement when we had DA meetings.” I’d spotted it right away. In the corner hidden partially behind a bookcase was the ‘Harry Christmas’ banner that I’d helped him take down all those years ago when we’d shared our first kiss. He must have found it in a box when he was moving stuff.

“Yeah, I knew that’s how I wanted to teach, and Minerva was all for it. Having only NEWT students makes it easier for me, too, since it’s only students who really want to be here.”

He sat on one of the pillows and I sat next to him.

“How’s Gabrielle?” I asked.

He smiled even wider.

“She’s doing fine. She had a bit of an internal problem, but it’s solved now.” He barked a short laugh.

“I’m guessing it was Auror Conroy?” I asked.

“I...officially, I don’t know, but unofficially, yeah, it was Conroy. She wasn’t happy that an outsider came in and took over, but Gab smoothed it over.”

“Do you know how she did it?”

“I’m pretty sure she told her if she didn’t like it that she could transfer, but to give her a chance.”

Justine poked her head in the classroom door.

“Oh, sorry, professor, Mrs Scamander, I didn’t realize you were here.” She came in.

“I was just coming to grab an expandable target dummy for practice later, if it’s okay?”

Harry nodded and grabbed one for her.

“Thank you, sir,” she said and took it from him.

“Did Lily talk to you about after school yet?” I asked her.

Her face reddened.

“I tried, but she won’t talk about it. We’ll have to decide soon…" Her voice was barely a whisper.

“I’ll push her gently,” I said, hugging her.

“Thanks, but please don’t tell her it came from me, it’ll make her upset at me.”

She fled.

Harry took my arm. “We should make our way to the pitch.”

The game was amazing. The girls flew faster and more precisely than I’d ever seen before. Lily especially looked really good; her time with the English team was paying off. Lily just kept scoring and scoring on the poor Ravenclaw Keeper. The other two Chasers were there and ready any time the Ravenclaw team tried to double-team her. The Hufflepuff Beaters were rather raw, but the Ravenclaw ones weren’t much better, so they mostly cancelled each other out.

Hufflepuff was up a hundred points and the gap was growing with each passing minute. I knew that the Ravenclaw Seeker was probably getting desperate to catch the Snitch, but Violet was marking him and keeping her eyes open. She wasn’t a great natural flyer, but Lily said she’d been practicing hard and had gotten better. I could see the determined way that Violet flew and smiled. She might not ever be a pro like the girls were going to be, but Quidditch was giving her something else.

I heard the crowd roar and turned back. Pandora had just intercepted an errant pass and was making a run on the Hufflepuff Keeper with Lily right on her. A Bludger just missed Pandora, but slowed her enough that Lily was able to block her. As Pandora passed the Quaffle, Lily shot by her and stole it back. The other Hufflepuff chasers were already in an attack pattern, having anticipated it. Lily had coached them well. I caught the English coach, Balton, out of the corner of my eye and he was smiling.

As the three Hufflepuff Chasers closed in on the poor Ravenclaw Keeper, Violet streaked into view behind him. They broke off since they couldn’t score with Violet in the scoring area. Violet flew right behind the Ravenclaw Keeper and when she came out the other side, I could see she was in pursuit of the Snitch. The Ravenclaw Seeker was out of position, so Violet only had to catch up to it to grab it, and she did seconds later. The match was over and Hufflepuff had won by two hundred and seventy points.

I waited outside the locker room for the girls with Harry. Pandora came out first, and while we were talking, Lily came out. Justine grabbed her just outside the door, picked her up and spun her around while kissing. Pandora rolled her eyes; I could see she was still upset about what had happened with Van and that Lily and Justine’s public kissing brought it back.

“I’m going to go study.” She hugged me and kissed my cheek.

“Thanks for coming, Mum. I love you.”

I squeezed her tight then let her go.

Lily came up, holding Justine’s hand.

“What did you think?” she asked.

“You were brilliant,” Harry said.

“I saw Balton, and he was really happy. I wouldn’t be surprised if you saw playing time in the friendlies as soon as you leave school.”

Harry hugged both Lily and Justine together.

I glommed onto them too.

“Yeah, brilliant,” I said and kissed Lily’s cheek.

I let go first, then Harry. Justine was still holding Lily’s hand.

“I’m really glad you could make it. Sorry that Rolf couldn’t. How’s Tina?” Lily asked as we started walking back to the castle.

“Not well at all; it probably won’t be long.”

Lily sighed.

“Tell Newt and Rolf that I’m sorry.”

“I will. I’m going directly there after leaving Hogwarts.”

We passed the rest of the time on the walk to the castle making small talk. Lily left with Justine to ‘study.’ I fondly remembered some of those study sessions at Hogwarts with Harry.

“I’ve got to go,” I told Harry after Lily had gone.

“Yeah, me too; papers to mark.” He hugged me tight and kissed both my cheeks.

“I love you,” he said. “I wish you and Rolf all the best; it’s taken a long time for me to say that and one hundred percent mean it.”

“I know.” I took his hands.

“I’ll see you in May, Mr Delacour,” I said teasing him.

“That’s Professor Delacour to you.” He was still laughing as I left.

That May was gorgeous and it looked like it was going to be sunny, but not too hot for the wedding. When I got there, it was already almost already full. Ron saw me first and waved me over. He and Hermione were doing last-minute tasks with the help of their children. Hugo looked uncomfortable in his dress robes, but Rose looked beautiful. Scorpius followed everywhere Rose went and ‘helped’ her.

“Where’s Dudley?” I asked. He was supposed to be Harry’s other groomsman.

Hermione leaned in and whispered. “His ex died; he and Violet are taking care of things. It’s just going to be Ron and Neville.”

“I’m sorry to hear she passed away, but at least she won’t be in pain anymore,” I whispered back. I made a mental note to write to Violet.

“Also, Pandora’s date ditched her. I’ve already caught her drinking and told her to wait until after the wedding if she’s going to get plastered,” Hemione whispered to me.

I nodded and set off in search of Pandora.

I found her sitting behind a bush, crying. Her makeup was running. She started to get up, but when she saw it was me, she hunched up even tinier and started crying more heavily. I held her and let her cry.

“Dev-Devi ditched me and I don’t know why…” she sobbed.

“He’d better have a good reason,” I said.

“Fucking A he’d better,” she said and hiccuped

Lily came around the bush and I met her eyes. She saw me holding Pandora, nodded and turned around. I saw just a little flash of Justine’s golden hair and knew she and Lily had been coming to talk to Pandora.

“Look, I’m sorry, but you’ll need to put on a brave face for Harry, at least until after the ceremony; can you do that?”

She nodded.

“I promise I’ll hold it together until the reception, but then I might fall apart.”

I cleaned up her face and helped her re-apply her makeup.

“Mum?” she asked in a small, little-girl voice when we were done.

“Yes?”

“Thanks, Mum. I love you. I’m sorry I’m such a mess lately.” She sniffled and I thought he might start crying again, but she held it together.

“You’ve got a lot of pressure on you right now with school and Quidditch and all the other stuff you’re doing, and what’s going on with Van and Devi. My advice would be to lay off on dating at least until school is done, and maybe drop another class if it’s too much.”

She nodded and we made our way out from behind the bush. The ceremony was about to start and Hermione waved Pandora over to stand next to Lily, Fleur and herself. The ceremony itself was a bit staid and traditional for my tastes, but Harry and Gabrielle’s smiles made up for it. Pandora started crying again, but I could tell it was a different type of tears. I smiled at her and she gave me a very small thumbs-up. Lily saw Pandora was crying and started to cry as well. I don’t know how Hermione was holding up so well, because even my eyes were getting teary.

I made my way around the tables at the reception while the first few dances were going on: Harry with Gabrielle, then her dad with her and Hermione with Harry. Pandora was hitting the champagne again. I saw Lily say something to her.

Lily got up and danced with her father and Pandora went to talk to Neville. When Lily sat back down next to Justine, they talked for a couple of minutes and Pandora came back to them. Her face was red, but she listened when Lily said something.

Pandora got up and danced with her dad. I went to talk to Neville, and kept an eye on Lily. She and Justine were feeding each other cake. I smiled and turned my attention to Neville. He saw me come up and gave me a big hug and a kiss that was borderline inappropriate for people not married to each other.

“May I ask what Pandora wanted to talk to you about?” I asked.

“She’s a bit drunk and didn’t want to Apparate back to Hogwarts herself, so I’m going to take her when I go. I thought it was for the best.”

“Thank you,” I said and kissed his cheek.

I went to dance with Harry. We danced like we had when we were younger. I wish I could remember what I said because Harry laughed in a way that I hadn’t seen for years.

When we were done, I looked around and Pandora and Neville were gone. I assumed they had gone back to Hogwarts. Lily and Justine were kissing deeply at their table, the last bits of cake on their plates ignored. Harry went up to them and they broke apart a bit guiltily.

Harry and Gabrielle left a few minutes later. Lily talked with the party planners for a few minutes, then she left with Justine. She had forgotten to say goodbye to me, but I could see the reason why in the way she looked at Justine. I made a few more farewells, then I went to see Rolf at his grandparents’ place.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This has Harry and Gabrielle's wedding in it, which was already shown in my story "Three Weddings" which is part of this universe. There may be some continuity errors between them; chalk it up to a difference in who the narrator is...yeah, that's it, it was deliberate, yeah. One short chapter left after this!


	23. Lily--After School

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lily makes her international debut for England.

The Portkey arrival light blinked on and a voice shouted to make sure the platform was cleared. A few seconds later there was a loud bang and the platform was filled with people. I didn’t spot Cho at first, but then she moved and I caught her eye. She winked at me and said something to the man next to her. He turned to face me, then caught sight of Coach Balton next to me. He bowed deeply to Coach Balton.

“Thank you again for letting me come along, Coach,” I said.

“Couldn’t very well say no to my new star, could I? Also your dad’s still quite famous and it looks good for us to have his daughter greeting the Chinese Quidditch team, yes?” He laughed.

The man that Cho had been talking to came over and he talked with Balton while I waited for Cho.

She talked with a few of the members of her team before she came over. She looked just like she had five years ago when she’d left for China.

She hugged me tightly.

“You’ve grown so much since I’ve been gone.”

When she’d left, I was quite a bit shorter than she was, but now I was just barely shorter.

“I’ve missed you. You were the first person to really show me what Quidditch could be.”

I pulled back and we talked as we walked.

“I mean, I learned at school and at camp, but you were the one who really believed in me.”

She smiled.

“And it’s paid off; you’re a pro and you’re going to play for England, I see.”

I was wearing a T-shirt with my name and number on it.

“My first international match is going to be our friendly.”

She looked at me sharply.

“Don’t go easy on us. It’s how we’ll learn. There’s only so much you can learn by practicing and observing.”

“Don’t worry, I won’t.”

Balton was introducing the coach to Mr Guffin, the head of the Department of Magical Games and Sports, and Cho had to go join him. I was about to leave when there was a tug at my sleeve.

“Lily Lovegood-Potter?” the man asked. He was wearing a Chinese jersey with the number 1 on it, so I knew he was likely one of their Chasers.

“Yes?”

He held out a pen and a program from our upcoming friendly.

“Please, may I have an autograph?”

I smiled and signed for him. He bowed to me.

“I look forward to playing against you.” I bowed back, not sure if I was doing it correctly, but he beamed at me. The rest of his team mobbed me for autographs and I had them sign my jersey as well.

Balton, Cho and Guffin noticed what was going on and they all grinned.

The day of the match came and it was miserable: drizzly, muggy, and warm. Everyone was complaining about it.

“Now, then, Lovegood-Potter, what do you think of this weather?” our Keeper MacKenzie asked me.

“It’s perfect,” I said.

He shot me a look.

From the stands, I heard, “Introducing, in her international debut, Lily Lovegood-Potter!”

MacKenzie slapped me on the back and I flew the gauntlet of my other team members, first the starters, then the reserves. Pandora was the very last of them to wish me well and I’ll always remember her fond arm-punch as I left the tunnel under the stands.

I flew onto the pitch to take my position to polite applause that I meant to turn thunderous by the end of the day.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you to everyone who stuck this out. I learned a lot about crafting a novel from this. I appreciate everyone who read, and a special thank you to anyone who left kudos or comments. ILY.


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